Spencer Heath Archive

Item 576

Composed by Heath in response to a challenge to use, in a sonnet, a selection of “the ten most beautiful words in the English language” as compiled by poet and lexicographer Wilfred J. Funk and published in Sunshine Magazine (unknown date). Text of undated newspaper clipping follows below. Spencer MacCallum remembers Heath saying the challenge was posed to all the members at a poetry meeting — and he accomplished his in 20 minutes (but missing “hush”). Elkridge, Maryland

July 31, 1938

  BEAUTIFUL WORDS

Sweet wisps of meaning, all emotion hued,

Let me but stir thee in my fancy’s bowl

And pour thee forth in measured rhyme, subdued to

faery patterns, meet for poet’s scroll.

As twinkling orbs, each lovely all alone,

In rhythmic pageants grace the lordless sky,

So fill my dreaming fancy with the tone

of silver chimes or mellow lullaby.—

Whisper a tranquil song to golden dawn,

Ravish the luminous noonday of its rays,

Glisten with misty glamour joys long gone,

Murmur a melody meet for halcyon days.

The beauty ye have singly caught and coined

Give forth ten-fold in gracious garlands joined.

 

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“The ten most beautiful words in the English language — ‘beautiful in meaning and in the musical arrangement of their letters’ — as compiled by Wilfred J. Funk, poet and lexicographer, are: dawn, hush, lullaby, murmering, tranquil, mist, luminous, chimes, golden, melody.”

— Sunshine Magazine