Monument

This is the song Eurydice's jailer sings to her in hell. As so often in Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld", comic pathos abounds.

"When I was king of the Boeotians, my kingdom prospered far and wide,
Bounded only by the oceans, until one day I took ill and died.
I remember without emotion the crown from which I had to part,
For now your charms cause such commotion in the kingdom of my heart!
Oh, had I known these fond emotions when I was king of the Boeotians!

If I were king of the Boeotians, you would reign there by my side.
Ah, do not shudder at the notion! I was attractive... before I died.
And though I have not one promotion through the ranks of souls in hell,
No ghost could offer such devotion, or take the heart that means so well
Of the late king of the Boeotians, the former king of the Boeotians."

THE CENTIPEDE
by A. P. Herbert
(Published in Punch, September 1920)

The centipede is not quite nice;
He lives in idleness and vice;
He has a hundred legs;
He also has a hundred wives,
And each of these, if she survives,
Has just a hundred eggs;
And that's the reason if you pick
Up any boulder, stone or brick
You nearly always find
A swarm of centipedes concealed;
They scatter far across the field,
But _one_ remains behind.
And you may reckon then, my son,
That not alone that luckless one
Lies pitiful and torn,
But millions more of either sex--
100 multiplied by x--
Will never now be born.
I daresay it will make you sick,
But so does all Arithmetic.

The gardener says, I ought to add,
The centipede is not so bad;
He rather LIKES the brutes.
The millipede is what he loathes;
He uses fierce bucolic oaths
Because it eats his roots;
And every gardener is agreed
That, if you see a centipede
Conversing with a milli--,
On one of them you drop a stone,
The other one you leave alone--
I think that's rather silly.
They may be right, but what I say
Is, "Can one stand about all day
And COUNT the creature's legs?"
It has too many, anyway,
And any moment it may lay
Another hundred eggs;
So if I see a thing like this (1)
I murmur, "Without prejudice,"
And knock it on the head;
And if I see a thing like that (2)
I take a brick and squash it flat;
In either case it's dead.

(1) and (2). There ought to be two pictures here, one with a hundred legs and the other with about a thousand. I have tried several artists, but most of them couldn't even get a hundred on to the page, and those who did always had more legs on one side than the other, which is quite wrong. So I have had to dispense with the pictures.

I found this in an old book today. It may not be the greatest piece of poetry, but it made me smile. (I find L8 hard to scan.)

LETTY'S GLOBE
by Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879)

When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep’d
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,
And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—
"Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!"
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

[I can never read this aloud without tearing up.]

"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play?"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world between?
Oh, mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)

"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"
I haven't time to answer now–the men are falling fast.
The guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat.
(If you take the first step, you will take the last!)

"How far is St. Helena from the field of Austerlitz?"
You couldn't hear me if I told–so loud the cannons roar.
But not so far for people who are living by their wits.
("Gay go up" means "Gay go down" the wide world o'er!)

"How far is St. Helena from the Emperor of France?"
I cannot see– I cannot tell–the crowns they dazzle so.
The kings sit down to dinner, and the queens stand up to dance.
(After open weather you may look for snow!)

"How far is St. Helena from the Capes of Trafalgar?"
A longish way – a longish way–with ten year more to run.
It's South across the water underneath a falling star.
(What you cannot finish you must leave undone!)

"How fair is St. Helena from the Beresina ice?"
An ill way–a chill way–the ice begins to crack.
But not so far for gentlemen who never took advice.
(When you can't go forward you must e'en come back!)

"How far is St. Helena from the field of Waterloo?"
A near way–a clear way–the ship will take you soon.
A pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do.
(Morning never tries you till the afternoon!)

"How far from St. Helena to the Gate of Heaven's Grace?"
That no one knows–that no one knows–and no one ever will.
But fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face,
And after all your trapesings, child, lie still!

I loved this story as a child.

THE BISHOP AND THE CATERPILLAR
by Mary E Manners( Read more... )

Since it's St Bridget's day, here's "The Giveaway" by Phyllis Mcginley:

Saint Bridget was a problem child.
Although a lass demure and mild,
And one who strove to please her dad,
Saint Bridget drove the family mad.
For here the fault in Bridget lay:
She would give everything away.

To any soul whose luck was out
She'd give her bowl of stirabout;
She'd give her shawl, divide her purse
With one or all. And what was worse,
When she ran out of things to give
She'd borrow from a relative.

Her father's gold, her grandsire's dinner,
She'd hand to cold and hungry sinner;
Give wine, give meat, no matter whose;
Take from her feet the very shoes,
And when her shoes had gone to others,
Fetch forth her sister's and her mother's.

She could not quit. She had to share;
Gave bit by bit the silverware,
The barnyard geese, the parlor rug,
Her little niece's christening mug,
Even her bed to those in want,
And then the mattress of her aunt.

An easy touch for poor and lowly,
She gave so much and grew so holy
That when she died of years and fame,
The countryside put on her name,
And still the Isles of Erin fidget
With generous girls named Bride or Bridget.

Well, one must love her. Nonetheless,
In thinking of her Givingness,
There's no denial she must have been
A sort of trial unto her kin.
The moral, too, seems rather quaint.
WHO had the patience of a saint,
From evidence presented here?
Saint Bridget? Or her near and dear?

I don't know who wrote this poem, except that it wasn't me, or where it came from, other than the UK before 1971 and presumably after 1969, but it's been stuck in my head today.

Update: areia points out a reference in an article which implies that this is "The Witch's Cat", by Ian Serraillier. Thank you!

"My magic is dead," said the witch. "I'm astounded
that people can fly to the moon, and around it.
It used to be mine and the cat's, till they found it.
My broomstick is draughty, I snivel with cold
as I ride to the stars, I am painfully old,
and so is my cat.
But planet or space-ship, rocket or race-ship
never shall part me from that."

She wrote an advertisement. "Witch in a fix
willing to part with the whole bag of tricks,
going cheap at the price of eighteen and six."
But no-one was ready to empty his coffers
for out-of-date rubbish. There weren't any offers,
except for the cat.
"But planet or space-ship, rocket or race-ship,
never shall part me from that."

The tears trickled fast, not a sentence she spoke
as she stamped on her broom and the brittle stick broke,
and she dumped in a dustbin her hat and her cloak,
then clean disappeared, leaving no prints,
and no-one at all has set eyes on her since—
or her tired old cat.
"But planet or space-ship, rocket or race-ship,
never shall part me from that."

A ballade is a lyric poem rhymed ababbcbc ababbcbc ababbcbc bcbc; the last line of each stanza is the same; the final bcbc part is called an "envoi" and is traditionally addressed to a prince. Now you know enough to be going on with. Here are three of my favourites:

Firstly, the Ballade of Illegal Ornaments, by Hilaire Belloc, about the High and Low parties in the Church of England. This was occasioned by a newspaper report of the Bishop of Birmingham (+Ernest William Barnes) telling a priest named Dr Leigh to remove from his church "all illegal ornaments, and especially a Female Figure with a Child". The poem begins by discussing and explaining contemporary events, but ends somewhere quite different.

( Read more... )

Next, Ballade of Suicide by Chesterton. This is fairly well-known. It has the quirk that rhyme a is equal to rhyme c. Again, this has a turn, a change of mood: it starts off jokingly, and turns around in the last stanza. (The prince in this ballade is presumably Satan.)

( Read more... )

Lastly, another by Belloc: the Ballade of Hell and of Mrs Roebeck, which uses the repeated line to great effect at the end.

( Read more... )

(As to my own work: I keep trying to hit the ballade mark and missing it. I have accidentally rhymed them ababcdcd (and again), and ababcbcb. The repeating line rule means it's well-nigh impossible to turn ababcbcb into ababbcbc without a complete rewrite. However, this one is a true ballade.)

This is creepy, and I've always loved it. I don't believe the author is known, but it's fairly old. I think it was an influence on Kipling's "Danny Deever". Note that in the UK, "dinner" can mean the meal you eat at midday. I wonder whether "road" and "stood" rhymed when this poem was written.

"Now, pray, where are you going, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.
"To school, sir, to school, sir," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"What have you in your basket, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.
"My dinner, sir, my dinner, sir," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"What have you for your dinner, child?" said Meet-on-the-Road.
"Some pudding, sir, some pudding, sir," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"Oh, then I pray, give me a share," said Meet-on-the-Road.
"I've little enough for myself, sir," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"What have you got that cloak on for?" said Meet-on-the-Road.
"To keep the wind and cold from me," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"I wish the wind would blow through you," said Meet-on-the-Road.
"Oh, what a wish! What a wish!" said Child-as-it-Stood.

"Pray, what are those bells ringing for?" said Meet-on-the-Road.
"To ring bad spirits home again," said Child-as-it-Stood.

"Oh! then I must be going, child," said Meet-on-the-Road.
"So fare you well, so fare you well," said Child-as-it-Stood.

Something I'm a bit curious about now: in Frances Cornford's triolet

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

…does "fat white woman" mean "fat Caucasian woman", or "fat woman dressed in white", or something else? How do you know? And can you find anyone who has discussed this question elsewhere?

Edit: here's someone in 1912 who seems to have thought it meant "dressed in white".