The New York Sun has been noodling a little in recent months about poetry by writers known by general readers entirely for their prose. This isn’t to speak of the likes of, say, John Updike, who occasionally complained that his poems weren’t taken as seriously as his novels.

Or Thomas Hardy, whose poetry was nearly forgotten before Philip Larkin in the 1960s began a campaign to revive it. That critical blind spot may come from what X.J. Kennedy once described as suspicion about a novelist writing poetry, “like some designer of Explorer rockets who hasn’t enough to do, in his spare time touching off displays of Roman candles.”

The poetry we’ve been thinking about recently, however, comes from professional prose writers who are mostly amateur poets: Aldous Huxley, for example. Grantland Rice. Hughes Mearns. And, with today’s Poem of the Day for one of our lighter Wednesdays, Jane Austen.

One has to wonder when there faded from public schooling the idea that the educated person should be able to write a technically accurate poem whenever a stray (morbid or romantic) thought strikes or an occasion (a friend’s birthday, a niece’s wedding, a co-worker’s retirement) needs a public comment.

Reports suggest that haiku still somewhat works this way in Japan: Schoolchildren are taught the form’s meter and traditional themes with the expectation that they will in adulthood be able to produce perhaps not good poems but correctly formed haikus when the moment demands. It’s a skill expected of educated adults.

And the parallel certainly existed once in England and the United States. George Washington wrote some poems. So did Abraham Lincoln. And so did Austen (1775–1817) — with her poems falling in the category of occasional verse: light poetry written for an occasion. While she read serious poetry (George Crabbe, for example), she wrote her own few surviving poems merely to enliven a letter or ensparkle an occasion. 

The cause of her 1806 “Oh! Mr. Best, You’re Very Bad” was a desire to see her friend Martha Lloyd, who had moved from Austen’s Hampshire town of Steventon to the village of Ibthorpe, 15 miles from away. The hope was that Lloyd could hitch a ride with a “Mr. Best,” who had visited Steventon on previous occasions.

Nothing certain is known of Mr. Best (although one biographer suggests he may have been the Rev. Thomas Best of Newbury), and we don’t even know whether Austen sent the poem to him.

Still, it’s a sprightly little occasional piece: an ironic play with heroic and moralistic tropes to urge Mr. Best to bring Martha Lloyd to visit the Austens, playing out in fairly competent ballad meter. Just as a literate person would have been expected to do.

Oh! Mr. Best, You’re Very Bad
by Jane Austen

Oh! Mr. Best, you’re very bad
And all the world shall know it;
Your base behaviour shall be sung
By me, a tunefull Poet. —

You used to go to Harrowgate
Each summer as it came,
And why I pray should you refuse
To go this year the same? —

The way’s as plain, the road’s as smooth,
The Posting not increased;
You’re scarcely stouter than you were,
Not younger Sir at least. —

If e’er the waters were of use
Why now their use forego?
You may not live another year,
All’s mortal here below. —

It is your duty Mr Best
To give your health repair.
Vain else your Richard’s pills will be,
And vain your Consort’s care.

But yet a nobler Duty calls
You now towards the North.
Arise ennobled — as Escort
Of Martha Lloyd stand forth.

She wants your aid — she honours you
With a distinguished call.
Stand forth to be the friend of her
Who is the friend of all. —

Take her, and wonder at your luck,
In having such a Trust.
Her converse sensible and sweet
Will banish heat and dust. —

So short she’ll make the journey seem
You’ll bid the Chaise stand still.
T’will be like driving at full speed
From Newb’ry to Speen hill. —

Convey her safe to Morton’s wife
And I’ll forget the past,
And write some verses in your praise
As finely and as fast.

But if you still refuse to go
I’ll never let your rest,
Bu[t] haunt you with reproachful song
Oh! wicked Mr. Best!

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.