Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Epigrams and Epitaphs: Martin Armstrong and “Fifty-Four Conceits”

By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Elephant Armstrong
A serious poet and writer, Martin Armstrong could also have fun.

I was looking through the poetry section at a bookstore. I noticed a small volume with the engaging title of Fifty-Four Conceits by Martin Armstrong. Extracting it from its shelf, I saw the full title – Fifty-Four Conceits: A Collection of Epigrams and Epitaphs Serious and Comic. This sounds weird, but I wondered how long this little book had been waiting for someone to buy it. Being something of a sucker for epigrams, I could say its wait was over. It joined several others I was holding in my hand, found itself scanned and placed in a bag, and was soon out the door.

I’d never heard of Armstrong (1882-1974). So, I turned to Dr. Google. A graduate of Cambridge, Armstrong served in the British Army in World War I and was best known as a writer of stories and novels. He was also a poet, officially listed in the 1922 (and final) anthology edition of Georgian Poetry. He married Canadian writer Jessie McDonald, the ex-wife of the American poet and writer Conrad Aiken. (Aiken included Armstrong in his 1952 autobiographical “narrative” Ushant but under a disguised name.)

Martin Armstrong

Martin Armstrong

Armstrong’s most prolific writing period was the 1930s and included poetry, short stories, essays, novels, translations, and biographies. His writing output fell precipitously after that, with very few works published from 1940 until his death in 1974.

Fifty-Four Conceits was originally published in 1933; you can find a used first edition online for between $800 and $900. My little reprint was published in 2018, but it doesn’t look shelf-worn, so I can’t say how long it’s been waiting for purchase. It includes the original 1933 woodcuts accompanying the text and drawn by Eric Ravilious, a British painter, book illustrator, and wood-engraver.

Ravilious (1903-1942) has his own story. A successful artist, he offered his services to the British Admiralty at the start of World War II in 1939. He painted warships, barrage balloons, bomb disposal experts, submarine interiors, and sea battles. On a mission to find a downed aircraft based in Iceland, Ravilious chose to join one of the search planes, but it, too, never returned to base; his body and those of the plane’s crew were never found.

Armstrong’s epigrams and epitaphs have largely retained their meanings for contemporary readers. The first of the 54 in the collection was the one that caught my eye:

A Judge

Many by me, their Judge, when I had breath,
Were to confinement sent to wait their death:
Now breathless I, without the strength to budge,
Lie here confined by Death to wait my Judge.

All of the epitaphs and epigrams have that same wry humor, whether they describe a chemist, an airman, an athlete, a soprano, St. Mary of Egypt, and other people or types of people. One epitaph might even seem to anticipate the death of his illustrator Ravilious nine years later.

Fifty Four Conceits ArmstrongA Crew Lost at Sea

Blown from our course far westward of the Horn
Beneath the Southern Cross we rolled forlorn
Till mastless, rudderless, upon our knees
We found our homeless haven in midseas.

And I had to laugh when I came across this epigram near the end of the volume:

Reviewers

People with a turn for spite
Write about what others write,
And their still more spiteful brothers
Write on those who write on others.
Lord who rulest sea and land
Save us from the secondhand.

Fifty-Four Conceits is a small, slender volume, but for me it opened a door on a poet and an illustrator I’d never heard of, and a time when poets and artists created in peace and served in war.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

Browse more book reviews

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan

5 star

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: Art, article, book reviews, Books, bookseller, Britain, Fairytales, Literary Tour, Poems, poetry, Poetry at Work Day, poetry reviews, Poets, work poems

Try Every Day Poems...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy