Corresponding with the Daily Mail in 1933, Compton Mackenzie presented two lists of the 10 most beautiful words in English. The first was phrased in blank verse:

Carnation, azure, peril, moon, forlorn,
Heart, silence, shadow, April, apricot.

The second was an Alexandrine couplet:

Damask and damson, doom and harlequin and fire,
Autumnal, vanity, flame, nectarine, desire.

In his 1963 autobiography he said that these lists had a “strange magic for me … a sort of elixir of youth.” See Euphony and Poetry Piecemeal.