Poetry pathways

 

This week, I’m going to treat you to a sliver of the wonderful world of slightly odd poetry. I’ve rabbited on before about poetry and how marvellous it is but there is definitely more in this story.

Take this snippet, which I hope I’ve remembered correctly:

“From noise of scarefires, rest ye free,

From murders, benedicite; (pronounce it ben-e-dic-it-ee and you get the rhyme)

From all mischances which may fright

Your pleasing slumbers in the night,

Mercy secure ye all,

And keep the goblin from ye, while ye sleep.”

 

Here’s another:

“Some angry angel,
Bleared by Bach and too inbred,
Climbed out of bed,
Pulled on a sock,
And, glancing downward,
Threw a rock
Which struck an earthbound peacock’s head.
The peacock fell.
The peacock’s yell,
Outraged by such treason,
Cried out to know why it,
Out of billions,
Should be hit,
And instantly invented a reason.”

The English poet Dryden coined this couplet:

“Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

 

Then there’s this offering from the poet John Skelton (1460-1529 and yes, of course I looked the dates up!)

 

“Ah, my bones ache, my limbs be sore;

Alas I have the sciatica full evil in my hip!

Alas where is the youth that was wont for to skip?

I am lousy and unliking, and full of scurf …”

 

I quoted this often to myself before my back operation when I, too, had “the sciatica full evil in my hip …”. And by the way, I’m fairly sure it’s pronounced louse-ee, not lousy.

 

As is well known, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an opium addict; how’s this for a drug induced vision:

 

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

…..

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

 

Then there are Clerihews, named after Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

 

Sir Humphrey Davy

Abominated gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered sodium.

 

Sir Christopher Wren said

I am going to dine with some men.

If anybody calls

Say I’m designing St Pauls.

 

Here’s an evocative poem by T.S. Eliot:

 

“The winter evening settles down

With smell of steak in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.”

 

And, finally, a little humour from Arthur Waley, translator of Chinese poetry.

 

“Families, when a child is born,

Want it to be intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked my whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid,

Then he will crown a tranquil life

By becoming a Cabinet Minister.”

 

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

 

The actress Betty Grable:

“There are two reasons why I’m in showbusiness, and I’m standing on both of them.”