A Song of the Weather -- Michael Flanders

The aforementioned Irresistible Followup...

(Poem #649) A Song of the Weather January brings the snow Makes your feet and fingers glow February's Ice and sleet Freeze the toes right off your feet Welcome March with wintry wind Would thou wer't not so unkind April brings the sweet spring showers On and on for hours and hours Farmers fear unkindly May Frost by night and hail by day June just rains and never stops Thirty days and spoils the crops In July the sun is hot Is it shining? No, it's not August cold, and dank, and wet Brings more rain than any yet Bleak September's mist and mud Is enough to chill the blood Then October adds a gale Wind and slush and rain and hail Dark November brings the fog Should not do it to a dog Freezing wet December then: Bloody January again! (January brings the snow Makes your feet and fingers glow). -- Michael Flanders

"Oh, to be in England, now that April..." - no, wait a minute, May - um, no,
June? July? Ah, wotthehell - I'm *glad* I'm not there <g>. No particular
comment on this amusing catalogue of the seasons - perhaps someone more
local would care to comment on its accuracy?

Like Tom Lehrer on the other side of the Atlantic, Flanders and Swann wrote
and recorded a disappointingly small set of songs, but what's there is all
brilliant. I've contemplated running some of my personal favourites, like
'Misalliance', 'A Transport of Delight' and 'Madeira M'Dear', but held off
due to a reluctance to run song lyrics without the music on which they
depend. Still, like Gilbert before him, Flanders' lyrics are clever enough
(and funny enough) to stand on their own. This is particularly true since,
again like Gilbert, he revels in complicated rhyme schemes and metrical
patterns, and at times the most deliciously contrived of rhymes. (Sadly,
today's piece is not representative of the latter tendencies).

Links:

 There's a biography at
 [broken link] http://members.tripod.com/~TimothyPlatypus/FaS/biography.html

 From the excellent F&S site at
 http://timothyplatypus.tripod.com/FaS/index.html

 This was an Irresistible Followup to Goulder's 'The January Man', poem #648

 Other songwriters in the same vein include Tom Lehrer and W. S. Gilbert,
 both of whom have featured on Minstrels before. See
 www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html

And finally:

 Many thanks to Ch'kai for introducing me to Flanders and Swann in the first
 place.

-martin