These are written to celebrate or memorialize a specific occasion, such as a birthday, a marriage, a death, a military engagement or victory, the dedication of a public building, or the opening performance of a
play.
Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamion," on the occasion of his own marriage
John Milton's "Lycidas," on the death of the young poet Edward King
Andrew Marvell's "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland" Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
These are all poems that have long survived their original occasions, and W. B. Yeats' "Easter, 1916" and W. H. Auden's "September 1, 1939" are notable modern examples.
England's poet laureate is often called on to meet the emergency of royal
anniversaries and important public events with an appropriate occasional
poem.
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