Today’s Poem: Green Groweth the Holly

Poetry and the amateur poet

Daniel Seghers, A Garland of Roses and Ivy Suspended by Ribbons, c. 1640 (Wikimedia Commons)

There was a time (a long time, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to roughly the middle of the twentieth) in which an educated English speaker was generally expected to be able to compose a rhymed and metered poem. Nothing great was expected of these com…