>> For succinctness on the topic, I wonder if anyone can beat Kipling:
>
> Possibly Byron:
>
> Posterity shall ne'er survey
> A nobler grave than this.
> Here lie the bones of Castlereigh;
> Stop, traveller, and piss.
Well there's Norman Ewer's:
How odd of God to choose the Jews
The only quatrain I know of in iambic monometer.
For pure shortness of course
Madam I'm Adam
wins (entitled "Man's First Words"). But it doesn't really have anything to say, where all the other ones honestly do.
Michael