Category Archives: Poems, prose & song

A right royal birth announcement

A town crier announces the birth of the Prince of Cambridge

This statement was delivered a few minutes ago by Kensington Palace:

“Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm.

The baby weighs 8lbs 6oz.

The Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth.

The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and members of both families have been informed and are delighted with the news.

Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well and will remain in hospital overnight.”

The news was also announced on an old-fashioned piece of paper, as demanded by royal custom and history to retain “the theatre” expected of any royal occasion. A piece of cream-colored A4-sized Buckingham Palace letterhead, signed by the doctors who assisted the Duchess during the labor and birth, was mounted on a royal easel that last proclaimed the birth of this little boy’s father just over 31 years ago, and it proclaimed:

“Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm today. Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well.”

Long live the future King of England!

Update: July 24, 2013: His Royal Highness now has a name — three, in fact. He will be christened George Alexander Louis. And he will be known officially, at least for the time being, as His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge.

The growing-up spread

Here’s a post about some toast, sitting on a plate.
Half is brown, half is white, split by love and hate.
People often ask us, “Why?” We’re not sure to be exact,
It just seems that sometimes… opposites attract.

— taken from Marmite’s Facebook page

The Throne

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote this poem, The Throne, for the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The poem was read by actress Claire Skinner during a service at Westminster Abbey commemorating the anniversary. The last two lines of the poem echo the words spoken by the young Princess Elizabeth in a speech she made on her 21st birthday from South Africa.

THE THRONE

The crown translates a woman to a Queen –

endless gold, circling itself, an O like a well,

fathomless, for the years to drown in – history’s bride,

anointed, blessed, for a crowning. One head alone

can know its weight, on throne, in pageantry,

and feel it still, in private space, when it’s lifted:

not a hollow thing, but a measuring; no halo,

treasure, but a valuing; decades and duty. Time-gifted,

the crown is old light, journeying from skulls of kings

to living Queen.

Its jewels glow, virtues; loyalty’s ruby,

blood-deep; sapphire’s ice resilience; emerald evergreen;

the shy pearl, humility. My whole life, whether it be long

or short, devoted to your service. Not lightly worn.

May Day

The Milkmaid’s Life

Upon the first of May
With garlands fresh and gay
They nimbly their feet do ply,
In honour of Th’ milking paile.
— c1640 (anon.)

The Humours of May Day

What Frolicks are here
So droll and so queer
How joyful appeareth the day
E’en Bunter and Bawd
Unite to applaud
And celebrate first of the May
— 1770 (anon.)

The Lusty Month of May

It’s May! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev’ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
It’s here, It’s here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear!
It’s May! It’s May!
That gorgeous holiday
When ev’ry maiden prays that her lad
Will be a cad!
It’s mad! It’s gay!
A libelous display!
Those dreary vows that ev’ryone takes,
Ev’ryone breaks.
Ev’ryone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!
Whence this fragrance wafting through the air?
What sweet feelings does its scent transmute?
Whence this perfume floating ev’rywhere?
Don’t you know it’s that dear forbidden fruit!
Tra la la la la! That dear forbidden fruit!
Tra la la la la!
Tra la la la la [etc.]
Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when ev’ryone throws
Self-control away.
It’s time to do
A wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day
One you’ll always rue!
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of “yes you may,”
The time for ev’ry frivolous whim,
Proper or “im.”
It’s wild! It’s gay!
Depraved in every way
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.
CHORUS:
Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev’ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
Tra la! It’s here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear.
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of great dismay.
GUENEVERE:
When all the world is brimming with fun,
Wholesome or “un.”
It’s mad! It’s gay!
A libelous display!
Those dreary vows that ev’ryone takes,
Ev’ryone breaks.
Ev’ryone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!
— from Camelot (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner)

Mother of Beauty

“It’s just a phase of every life,”
The adults like to say.
When offspring of a common pair
Begin to disobey.

They’ll fight, they’ll feud, they’ll interfere,
By Cain and Abel’s lead.
For children – namely those of kin –
Are hardly all agreed.

Yet as the farmers grow to men
And younger shepherds age,
Their boiling blood runs cooler and
Respect is born from rage.

For all begin to realize
Their own misguided ways:
Their twin or kin the enemy,
Instead of numbered days.

Then soon enough, they too will take
Their final breaths of air;
And what a shame to realize
That love could have repaired

The youthful battles—bored disputes—
Our mothers couldn’t cease.
For she grows old, thus from her rule
We siblings are released.

We’re disciplined by someone else,
A stricter reaper now;
For beauty’s mother wakes us up
Before she lays us down.

— Flo Wen

(Published in the Tufts Observer)

Poetry in Motion: “Ragtime” by Kevin Young

Seen on B train of NYC subway this evening.

Poetry in Motion: “Grand Central” by Billy Collins

Seen on the 1 train subway in NYC.

Songs my childhood taught me 6: Songs my mother taught me

Today is Glossophilia’s second birthday, and to mark the occasion (and ending Glossophilia’s short series of posts about childhood rhymes, songs and words), I’m dedicating this post to my mum and my grandma, and the songs they taught and sang to me.

One of my favorites, which my mum often sang when she was tucking me into bed, was one she wrote herself when she was about 10 or 11 years old:

The moon shone red and animals stood on their heads when I kissed you last night.
The stars stood still to hear you say I will, when I kissed you last night.
Trees were walking and fishes flew
The sky was green and the grass was blue.
The whole darned world was topsy turvy coz of you
When I kissed you last night.

— Maureen (Jane) Cornwell

To calm me when I was upset, she would sing this little song that her own mum sang to her, probably dating from the Great Depression:

Don’t cry little girl, you can share your home with me.
Though we’ve got no table and we’ve got no chairs
We’ve got no windows and we’ve got no stairs
It’s just a humble doorstep, but you’re as welcome as can be.
So don’t cry little girl. Don’t you cry little girl.
You can share your home with me.

The songs my sister and I sang at the piano with our mum were many, but one of my favorites was “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes”, an old English song setting of an Elizabethan poem “Song To Cecilia” by Ben Johnson. Here’s a lovely version of it sung by Johnny Cash. Other childhood chestnuts were “Early One Morning”, an old English folk song (sung here by the New College Choir, Oxford), and “Cherry Ripe”, an early 19th-century English song (sung here by Salome Jiqia), as well as Creole ballads and spirituals from the songbook of Charity Bailey, whom the New York Times described as “a young woman with a sad, sweet and rather light voice”. And we especially loved “Brother, Come and Dance With Me” from Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel, which was almost certainly on the program in this short home cine film.

Here’s a song and a few sayings that were passed down from my beloved grandmother, a survivor — along with my mum and aunt — of the London Blitz who asked for just two pieces of music to be sung and played at her funeral: “We’ll Meet Again”, made famous by the war-time singer and “the forces’ sweetheart” Vera Lynn, and the theme tune from Match of the Day, one of the BBC’s long-running TV shows. That was my Grandma. (And this TV theme will always remind me of her too.) She taught my Mum this fun little ditty that we grew up with:

“Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey, A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?” This was a novelty song written in the early 40s by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. Recorded by the Merry Macs on Decca, it became an unlikely pop song hit and reached Number 1 in March 1944. The words were a nonsensical reworking of this phrase “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”, which in turn was apparently based on an English nursery rhyme brought home from school in undecipherable form by one of the songwriters’ young children.

Here are some other sayings that my Grandma passed down through my mum, that delighted our little ears and minds:

“There’s a terrible lot to do today that you today must do today and if today you do today what you today must do, you’ll find today and every today a better today for us.”

“Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. For if you trouble trouble, you’ll only double trouble, and trouble others too …”

“How many beans make five? A bean and a half, a bean and a half, half a bean and a bean and a half.”

“The other day, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish to God he’d go away.”

We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where,
don’t know when.
But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.

Keep smiling through,
Just like you always do,
Till the blue skies drive those dark clouds, far away.

So will you please say hello,
To the folks that I know,
Tell them I won’t be long,
They’ll be happy to know
that as you saw me go
I was singing this song .

We’ll meet again,
don’t know where,
don’t know when,
But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.

— Ross Parker

When Irish eyes are smiling – and other St Patrick’s Day quotes

When Irish eyes are smiling, sure ’tis like a morn in spring.
In the lilt of Irish laughter you can hear the angels sing,
When Irish hearts are happy all the world seems bright and gay,
And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure, they steal your heart away.
— Chauncey Olcott and George Graff, Jr. (lyrics), Ernest R. Ball (music)

For ’tis green, green, green, where the ruined towers are gray,
And it’s green, green, green, all the happy night and day;
Green of leaf and green of sod, green of ivy on the wall,
And the blessed Irish shamrock with the fairest green of all.
— Mary Elizabeth Blake

“We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.” — Winston Churchill

“Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift.” — Liam Neeson

“Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.” — James Joyce

“What’s the use of being Irish if the world doesn’t break your heart?” — John F. Kennedy

“Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen” — W. H. Auden

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” — William Butler Yeats

“If you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you’re lucky enough!” (Irish saying)

Songs my childhood taught me 5: Books I loved when we were very young …

Glossophilia’s nostalgic journey back into the world of childhood words stops to take a look at the books we read and loved as kids. Here’s a list of the ones I read and re-read from toddlerhood up to my early teenaged years — along with the book covers I remember so well. (A small confession: I was still reading Enid Blyton when I was 11 or 12. Following the wild exploits of her boarding-school girls was irresistible.) I went through the usual girlish horse-crush — although my favorite equine hero was actually one of the wooden variety. Bands of unchaperoned children going on sailing adventures in the Lake District, getting up to no good at boarding schools, putting on plays and acting up at stage schools, or becoming kings and queens in new-found lands were the stuff of my daydreams during my formative years. Arrietty, the curious and adventurous young heroine of The Borrowers series, was my first real literary idol, followed soon by Harriet the Spy (she introduced me to the fantastic world of forensic psychology). Eventually, and certainly not uniquely, I encountered and came under the spell of a trio of tragic young heroines whose predicaments, lives, and fates all captured my young imagination, and who all continue to haunt and inspire me to this day: Little Women‘s Beth, Brontë’s Jane, and Hardy’s brave and beloved Tess.

A. A. Milne: When We Were Six; When We Were Very Young

Virginia Lee Burton: The Little House