A Grievance -- J K Stephen

(Poem #1889) A Grievance After Byron Dear Mr. Editor: I wish to say - If you will not be angry at my, writing it - But I've been used, since childhood's happy day, When I have thought of something, to inditing it; I seldom think of things; and, by the way, Although this meter may not be exciting, it Enables one to be extremely terse, Which is not what one always is in verse. I used to know a man, - such things befall The observant wayfarer through Fate's domain - He was a man, take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again; I know that statement's not original; What statement is, since Shakespeare? or, since Cain, What murder? I believe 'twas Shakespeare said it, or Perhaps it may have been your Fighting Editor. Though why an Editor should fight, or why A Fighter should abase himself to edit, Are problems far too difficult and high For me to solve with any sort of credit. Some greatly more accomplished man than I Must tackle them: let's say then Shakespeare said it; And, if he did not, Lewis Morris may (Or even if he did). Some other day, When I have nothing pressing to impart, I should not mind dilating on this matter. I feel its import both in head and heart, And always did, - especially the latter. I could discuss it in the busy mart Or on the lonely housetop; hold! this chatter Diverts me from my purpose. To the point: The time, as Hamlet said, is out of joint, And perhaps I was born to set it right, - A fact I greet with perfect equanimity. I do not put it down to "cursed spite," I don't see any cause for cursing in it. I Have always taken very great delight In such pursuits since first I read divinity. Whoever will may write a nation's songs As long as I'm allowed to right its wrongs. What's Eton but a nursery of wrong-righters, A mighty mother of effective men; A training ground for amateur reciters, A sharpener of the sword as of the pen; A factory of orators and fighters, A forcing-house of genius? Now and then The world at large shrinks back, abashed and beaten, Unable to endure the glare of Eton. I think I said I knew a man: what then? I don't suppose such knowledge is forbid. We nearly all do, more or less, know men, - Or think we do; nor will a man get rid Of that delusion while he wields a pen. But who this man was, what, if aught, he did, Nor why I mentioned him, I do not know, Nor what I "wished to say" a while ago. -- J K Stephen

Most famous poets have attracted their share of parodies, and Byron was no
exception, but seldom have I seen a parody as perfect as today's. The
language, the tone, the metre, the sentiments, the construction, are all
spot on. Moreover, the mockery is subtle enough that there are very few
places one can point to and say "Byron would not have written that", though
the cumulative effect is unmistakably parodic. All in all a superbly
impressive piece of work, even for as consistently good a parodist as Stephen.

martin

[Links]

Byron's "Don Juan", an excellent example of the style today's poem parodies:
  [broken link] http://www.sensible.it/personal/resio/donjuan/byron/

Biography:
  http://www.bartleby.com/223/0615.html

More of Stephen's work:
  http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/310.html

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Who is in Charge of the Clattering Train? -- Anonymous

Guest poem submitted by Bill Whiteford:

(Poem #1888) Who is in Charge of the Clattering Train? Who is in charge of the clattering train? The axles creak and the couplings strain, And the pace is hot, and the points are near, And Sleep has deadened the driver's ear; And the signals flash through the night in vain, For Death is in charge of the clattering train. -- Anonymous

I don't know the title (though I would guess it's the whole first line).
It appears to be anonymously written. You may have heard the Churchill
character quoting this verse in the TV drama "The Gathering Storm". It
was apparently one of Winston's favourites, having been committed to
memory by him from the pages of Punch when he was about nine.

I quite like the train-like rhythm of the lines, and the way the poem
crashes into the last line. It is, of course, a kind of Victorian
melodrama in six lines. The whole thing sometimes springs to mind when,
at work, colleagues phone up and ask who is in charge.

Bill Whiteford.

[Thomas adds]

Project Gutenberg reveals that today's poem forms merely an extract --
the first two and last four lines -- of a much longer poem titled "Death
and His Brother Sleep", which appeared in Volume 99 of Punch magazine,
published October 4, 1890. The poem was attributed to "Queen Mab", and
was written in response to a rail accident at Eastleigh; it appeared in
Punch prefaced by the following lines:

  Major Marindin, in his Report to the Board of Trade
  on the railway collision at Eastleigh, attributes it
  to the engine-driver and stoker having "failed to
  keep a proper look-out." His opinion is, that both
  men were "asleep, or nearly so," owing to having
  been on duty for sixteen hours and a-half. "He
  expresses himself in very strong terms on the great
  danger to the public of working engine-drivers and
  firemen for too great a number of hours."

        -- Daily Chronicle

"Queen Mab" is also the title of a poem by Shelley, which begins:

     How wonderful is Death,
     Death, and his brother Sleep!
  One, pale as yonder waning moon
     With lips of lurid blue;
     The other, rosy as the morn
  When throned on ocean's wave
        It blushes o'er the world;
  Yet both so passing wonderful!

Clearly today's poet took both title and pseudonym from Shelley's
earlier work.

The full text of "Death and His Brother Sleep" can be found here:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12306/12306-h/12306-h.htm (HTML)
  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12306/12306.txt (plain text)
  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12306/12306-h/images/163.png (pic)

It's interesting to note how the emphasis of the two pieces -- the
lengthy Punch original, and today's pithier (I'm tempted to say
"punchier") extract -- is completely different. Speaking for myself, I
much prefer the short version, but readers are encouraged to read them
both and make up their own minds.

Thomas.

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The Lord Chancellor's Song -- W S Gilbert

(Poem #1887) The Lord Chancellor's Song Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest: Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers: Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest, And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers! When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire -- the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles -- you feel like mixed pickles -- so terribly sharp is the pricking, And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing --twixt you and the ticking. Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle; Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle! Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head ever aching. But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking; For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich -- Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage -- And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations -- They're a ravenous horde -- and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too -- which they've somehow or other invested in -- And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a company he's interested in -- It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables (Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables -- You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree), And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree -- From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries, While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three corners, and Banburys -- The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring, And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing -- You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long -- ditto, ditto my song -- and thank goodness they're both of them over! [Lord Chancellor falls exhausted on a seat.] -- W S Gilbert

Note: From Iolanthe. I've split the (long!) lines into two; you can see the
song in its original formatting here:
  http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/iolanthe/web_op/iol20.html

No canon of patter songs would be complete without this masterpiece of
Gilbert and Sullivan's, one of the most widely recognised of the genre, and,
to my mind, one of the finest. Gilbert was, of course, a master of carefully
crafted and logically worked out nonsense; here, he takes the license
afforded by a dreamscape and abandons even the semblance of plausibility,
shifting into a surreal (but oddly coherent) stream-of-consciousness song
that, like many of the duo's best pieces, transcends the operetta within
which it occurs.

What I really like about this song is the nigh-perfect way in which it
conveys a sense of stumbling headlong through the shifting narrative of the
dream, culminating in the breathless, helter-skelter rush of the last two
passages. This is already evident in the lyrics, but it attains its full
effect when married to Sullivan's music; the final product is both instantly
captivating and utterly memorable.

martin

[Links]

Everything Iolanthe: http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/iolanthe/html/index.html

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What Any Lover Learns -- Archibald MacLeish

Guest poem submitted by Sanket:

(Poem #1886) What Any Lover Learns Water is heavy silver over stone. Water is heavy silver over stone's Refusal. It does not fall. It fills. It flows Every crevice, every fault of the stone, Every hollow. River does not run. River presses its heavy silver self Down into stone and stone refuses. What runs, Swirling and leaping into sun, is stone's Refusal of the river, not the river. -- Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish, American poet, playwright and speech-writer for F.
D. Roosevelt, wrote in his Ars Poetica, "A poem should not mean / But
be". This poem is calm and insightful, like a dispassionate observation.
It is interestingly titled "What Any Lover Learns".

The motion described happens not by the water but by the bedrock.

Sanket.

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Boy at the Window -- Richard Wilbur

Guest poem submitted by Steve Chernicoff:

(Poem #1885) Boy at the Window Seeing the snowman standing all alone In dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful sight can hardly reach to where The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Returns him such a god-forsaken stare As outcast Adam gave to Paradise. The man of snow is, nonetheless, content, Having no wish to go inside and die. Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry. Though frozen water is his element, He melts enough to drop from one soft eye A trickle of the purest rain, a tear For the child at the bright pane surrounded by Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear. -- Richard Wilbur

Apropos of Martin's submission of "A Barred Owl" (Minstrels Poem #1849),
here's another by Richard Wilbur that I like. It deals with the same
themes Martin mentioned in his comments on the other poem, the
"domestication" of a child's fear and the "stark sense of the violence
that lurks in the mundane." Wilbur's image of the mutual pity between
boy and snowman is quite moving.

One thing I particularly like about Wilbur is his formal discipline. In
an age when most poets can't be bothered with such niceties as rhyme and
meter, Wilbur's poems are as rigorously and precisely structured as
anything from a Milton, Keats, or Tennyson. An exemplary illustration of
Robert Frost's definition of freedom as "moving easy in harness."

--Steve

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A Southern Girl -- Samuel Minturn Peck

(Poem #1884) A Southern Girl Her dimpled cheeks are pale; She's a lily of the vale, Not a rose. In a muslin or a lawn She is fairer than the dawn To her beaux. Her boots are slim and neat, -- She is vain about her feet, It is said. She amputates her r's, But her eyes are like the stars Overhead. On a balcony at night, With a fleecy cloud of white Round her hair -- Her grace, ah, who could paint? She would fascinate a saint, I declare. 'Tis a matter of regret, She's a bit of a coquette, Whom I sing: On her cruel path she goes With a half a dozen beaux To her string. But let all that pass by, As her maiden moments fly, Dew-empearled; When she marries, on my life, She will make the dearest wife In the world. -- Samuel Minturn Peck

Note: lawn: A light cotton or linen fabric of very fine weave.
  [Middle English laun, after Laon, a city of northern France.]

This is a delightfully lighthearted poem, one that kept me smiling
throughout at its sheer, brazen refusal to take either itself or its
subject seriously. Furthermore (apart from the wonderful "half a dozen beaux
to her string" pun, and the reference to "amputated" 'r's) the humour seems
to lie almost entirely in the tone of the poem - no mean feat, considering
how many works of this sort either slip into a more heavy-handed sort of
mockery, or go the more "explicit humour" route.

Note, also, the wonderfully lilting rhythm of the poem - something that drew
me in from the first verse, even before I noticed Peck's gentle humour.
Again, it takes an excellent ear and a very deft touch to keep the poem from
being annoyingly sing-song. All in all, it was just enjoyable to read a poem
clearly written for the sheer fun of writing poetry, but written nonetheless
with excellent attention paid to style and detail.

martin

Links:
  There is a brief biography here:
    [broken link] http://www.pddoc.com/poems/#peck

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To Raja Rao -- Czeslaw Milosz

Guest poem submitted by Prashant Paul:

(Poem #1883) To Raja Rao Raja, I wish I knew the cause of that malady. For years I could not accept the place I was in. I felt I should be somewhere else. A city, trees, human voices lacked the quality of presence. I would live by the hope of moving on. Somewhere else there was a city of real presence, of real trees and voices and friendship and love. Link, if you wish, my peculiar case (on the border of schizophrenia) to the messianic hope of my civilization. Ill at ease in the tyranny, ill at ease in the republic, in the one I longed for freedom, in the other for the end of corruption. Building in my mind a permanent polis forever deprived of aimless bustle. I learned at last to say: this is my home, here, before the glowing coal of ocean sunsets, on the shore which faces the shores of your Asia, in a great republic, moderately corrupt. Raja, this did not cure me of my guilt and shame. A shame of failing to be what I should have been. The image of myself grows gigantic on the wall and against it my miserable shadow. That's how I came to believe in Original Sin which is nothing but the first victory of the ego. Tormented by my ego, deluded by it I give you, as you see, a ready argument. I hear you saying that liberation is possible and that Socratic wisdom is identical with your guru's. No, Raja, I must start from what I am. I am those monsters which visit my dreams and reveal to me my hidden essence. If I am sick, there is no proof whatsoever that man is a healthy creature. Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness had to make our agony only more acute. We needed God loving us in our weakness and not in the glory of beatitude. No help, Raja, my part is agony, struggle, abjection, self-love, and self-hate, prayer for the Kingdom and reading Pascal. -- Czeslaw Milosz

        (Berkeley, 1969 )

I stumbled upon this poem(and Milosz) when searching for the writer Raja
Rao. By far one of the most brilliant that I have read, and it brings
forth the best of Milosz. (Raja Rao was a great Indian writer, and with
R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand considered one of the trinity of Indian
writers in english.)

To me some of the elements of the poem come from the time Milosz spent
his time at Berkeley away from his native place Poland, like the first
part. But the poem is also an accurate description of the struggle with
the present, and the hope for a change that changes everything. Two
striking ideas -- original sin and "...I must start from where I am...",
I really love the way they are written here.

An absolutely amazing poem in my book.

Prashant.

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