Mr Auberon Waugh's "Way of the World" column in the Daily Telegraph always makes interesting reading. Just the other day, he was astride one of his regular hobbyhorses, the promotion of poetry which rhymes, scans and makes sense. He has also put his money (actually provided by the Mail on Sun- day) where his mouth is: the Literary Review, which Mr Waugh edits, last Tuesday presented a substantial cash prize to the winner of its annual poetry competition. Needless to say, the poems submitted had to fulfil the Waugh requirements.

I look forward to reading this winning entry, which Mr Waugh has described as "a beautiful, hauntingly erotic poem on the subject of figs, written with sensuality and humour."

Mr Waugh further says that the poem "should be part of every young married woman's repertoire."

This is probably a little optimistic. I would like to be proved wrong, but I do not imagine there are very many poems in the repertoire of most young married women today - and probably even fewer in the repertoire of young married men.

It is a great shame. If I were to suggest one essential poem for the repertoire of young married men and women, it would be the appropriately-titled Epithalamion, by Michael Longley:

These are the small hours when

Moths by their fatal appetite

That brings them tapping to get in, Are steered along the night

To where our window catches light. . .

This beautiful poem (from Longley's No Continuing City collection) not only fulfils Mr Waugh's perfectly reasonable requirements regarding scansion, rhyme and sense, but is also a profound meditation on the nature and hopes of young romantic married love (very young: the poem's setting is the marital bedchamber just before dawn on the couple's wedding night). If the young lovers are subsequently blessed with offspring they might well commit to memory the equally moving and appropriate sonnet Beginnings by Micheal O Siadhail, from The Chosen Garden:

A wing stirs in its sheath. Now it seems all the fumblings of the larva years prophesied this moment. . .".

I hope that the above satisfies the lady who asked me "Do you ever write anything serious?"

But the row over "free verse" and its supposed delights, or lack of them, has become wearisome over the years, principally because of the subjective nature of the debate (and because there is always someone to bring up the tedious Frostian notion of playing tennis without a net, about the only feasible option left to certain members of my own club).

Objectively, however, there is at least one strong argument for verse that rhymes and scans, makes sense and is technically proficient: it allows for clear identification. This becomes important when attribution is an issue. Not very long ago, a book dealer in New Jersey discovered what was thought to be a previously unknown poem by Edgar Allan Poe, written on a blank page inside a rare Poe first edition. The handwriting was authenticated as Poe's, but no proof has yet emerged that the poem was his own composition: he may simply have copied it out.

This is almost certainly the case. Mr David Kresh, a specialist at the US Library of Congress, has examined the poem and pointed out that the rhythm of the seventh line, which appeared to have an extra half-beat, made him doubt that it was written "by the author of such mellifluous verses as The Raven and The Bells." According to Mr Kresh, "the scansion on that was a little clunky for Poe, who was a master technician. It didn't strike me particularly as Poe. It could be anyone in the 19th century - good or bad." I have read the poem myself and to tell the truth it is more bad than good. Moreover, and more importantly, I believe I could prove that objectively.

Well, there goes today's space: it looks like we shall have to leave discussion of the Small House in Irish literature until another day. I also hope at some stage to raise an issue close to the heart of my colleague Seamus Martin, namely the curious neglect in literary circles of the Sackville-Easts.