Thirty Bob a Week -- John Davidson

(Poem #420) Thirty Bob a Week I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw, And set the blooming world a-work for me, Like such as cut their teeth -- I hope, like you -- On the handle of a skeleton gold key; I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week: I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see. But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss; There's no such thing as being starred and crossed; It's just the power of some to be a boss, And the bally power of others to be bossed: I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur; Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost! For like a mole I journey in the dark, A-travelling along the underground From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park, To come the daily dull official round; And home again at night with my pipe all alight, A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound. And it's often very cold and very wet, And my missus stitches towels for a hunks; And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let-- Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks. And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, When the noisy little kids are in their bunks. But you never hear her do a growl or whine, For she's made of flint and roses, very odd; And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine, Or I'd blubber, for I'm made of greens and sod: So p'r'haps we are in Hell for all that I can tell, And lost and damn'd and served up hot to God. I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silver-tongue; I'm saying things a bit beyond your art: Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung, Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start! With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks, Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? I didn't mean your pocket, Mr., no: I mean that having children and a wife, With thirty bob on which to come and go, Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife: When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think, And notice curious items about life. I step into my heart and there I meet A god-almighty devil singing small, Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, And squelch the passers flat against the wall; If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all. And I meet a sort of simpleton beside, The kind that life is always giving beans; With thirty bob a week to keep a bride He fell in love and married in his teens: At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn't luck: He knows the seas are deeper than tureens. And the god-almighty devil and the fool That meet me in the High Street on the strike, When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, Are my good and evil angels if you like. And both of them together in every kind of weather Ride me like a double-seated bike. That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled. But I have a high old hot un in my mind -- A most engrugious notion of the world, That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind: I give it at a glance when I say 'There ain't no chance, Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.' And it's this way that I make it out to be: No fathers, mothers, countres, climates -- none; Not Adam was responsible for me, Nor society, nor systems, nary one: A little sleeping seed, I woke -- I did, indeed -- A million years before the blooming sun. I woke because I thought the time had come; Beyond my will there was no other cause; And everywhere I found myself at home, Because I chose to be the thing I was; And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape I always went according to the laws. I was the love that chose my mother out; I joined two lives and from the union burst; My weakness and my strength without a doubt Are mine alone for ever from the first: It's just the very same with a difference in the name As 'Thy will be done.' You say it if you durst! They say it daily up and down the land As easy as you take a drink, it's true; But the difficultest go to understand, And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you. It's a naked child against a hungry wolf; It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It's walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one; And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck. -- John Davidson

This poem caused a scandal when it was first published, back in 1894. And
unsurprisingly so - its sentiments and its language were anathema to the
Victorians. No daffodils, no rainbows, certainly no Muses  - instead, a harsh
Cockney voice laying bare the grimy underbelly of 'civilization'. Powerful
stuff, and powerfully presented.

Of course, the irony is that Davidson, in his use of language and emotion, was
being far more true to the ideals of Wordsworth and his fellow Romantics than
his late-Victorian contemporaries...

thomas.

PS. The final stanza is deservedly famous - see 'Invictus', another masterpiece
of defiance and courage, at poem #221

[Notes]

'Skeleton gold key' - the phrase implies that gold opens all doors.
'engrugious' is a malapropism for 'egregious'.
'suburbean' is an intentional mispelling; see the later line about 'the kind
that life is always giving beans'.

[Life and Works]

Poet, translator, novelist, and man of letters, John Davidson spent the first
part of his life as a teacher in Greenock, Glasgow, Perth, Crieff, and other
places. In 1884 he married Margaret Macarthur, who bore him two sons. In 1899 he
moved to London and earned a living by journalism. His second and third volumes
of verse, Fleet Street Eclogues (1893), proved popular, established his
reputation, and earned the respect of T. S. Eliot, who wrote a preface to a
selection of Davidson's poems in 1961 edited by Maurice Lindsay (PR 4525 D5A17
1961 Robarts Library). Little after these books, whether poetry, novels, or
translations, did well, and Davidson moved depended on his friends for support
until getting a Civil List pension in 1906 and moving to Penzance a year later.
The last half of his literary career was devoted to unsuccessful philosophical
poems and tragedies promoting a new world order. Depressed and ill, Davidson
committed suicide March 23, 1909, but his body was only found on the seashore
months later. He was buried at sea on September 21, 1909.

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/davidson.html

(Eliot's admiration for Davidson finds concrete expression in the Cockney
dialogues of the second part of The Waste Land, 'A Game of Chess', available
online at http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html - t.)

March -- Boris Pasternak

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian:

(Poem #419) March The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath; The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below. Spring -- that corn-fed, husky milkmaid -- Is busy at her chores with never a letup. The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia -- See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?) Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming, And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health. These days -- these days, and these nights also! With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon, With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables, And with the chattering of rills that never sleep! All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn; Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow; And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter-- The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone. -- Boris Pasternak

(attributed to Yurii Andreivich Zhivago).

Translation has rendered this poem (originally written in Russian, like the
classic novel in which it appeared) into blank verse.  It still retains much of
its original beauty.  The unusual imagery is what grabbed me - contrasting
winter (disease and suffering) with spring (health, youth).  It is a metaphor
for the whole book, I feel.

Zhivago's poems are all listed as an appendix (and there is a long note by
Pasternak in the middle of the text about how Zhivago's poems evolve in style -
from long, rambling blank verse to short, sharp poems with a staccato rhythm,
just three words to a line).  They also reflect his changing moods and fortunes.

On the whole, Zhivago is an excellent book, and the poems at the end are the
icing on the cake.  Every time I read the book (and the poems) I keep hearing
"Lara's Theme" from the David Lean movie.  Everything comes together into one
glorious whole.

Suresh.

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair -- Stephen Foster

(Poem #418) Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air; I see her tripping where the bright streams play, Happy as the daisies that dance on her way. Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour, Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er: Oh! I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air. I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile, Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile; I hear her melodies, like joys gone by, Sighing round my heart o'er the fond hopes that die:- Sighing like the night wind and sobbing like the rain,- Wailing for the lost one that comes not again: Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low, Never more to find her where the bright waters flow. I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed Far from the fond hearts round her native glade; Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown, Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone. Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore While her gentle fingers will cull them no more: Oh! I sigh for Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air. -- Stephen Foster

Another of those wonderfully musical poems that practically sing themselves.
Foster was a musician and singer as well as a poet (his most famous work was
undoubtedly "Oh Susanna") and it shows - his words have a lyricism about
them that blends well with the floating, flitting imagery, and keeps the
sentimentality from drifting into triteness.

Biography:

Stephen Foster was born July 4, 1826, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was
educated at Allegheny Academy, Athens Academy, and Jefferson College. He
became a full-time musician in 1850, working for and with Christy's
Minstrels, Campbell Minstrels, and the New Orleans Serenaders. His songs
made him famous with the public. Married to Jane Denny McDowell, and with
one daughter, Foster moved to New York City in 1860, but he soon succumbed
to alcoholism and poverty, living alone in a Bowery hotel. He died on
January 13, 1864, in Bellevue Hospital from injuries to his face and neck as
a result of a fall in his hotel room.

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/fosters.html

See also http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/0703.htm for a somewhat more
poignant statement of the above.

Links:

This poem reminds me irresistibly of Naidu's Palanquin Bearers: poem #390

We've run a few actual song lyrics on minstrels:

  poem #112
  poem #114
  poem #116
  poem #119
  poem #287
  poem #299

and several poems that ought to be, but I'll leave you to make your own
judgements about those.

- martin

Thistles -- Ted Hughes

(Poem #417) Thistles Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure. Every one a revengeful burst Of resurrection, a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects. Every one manages a plume of blood. Then they grow grey like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground. -- Ted Hughes

One of the marks of a great poet is the ability to take a perfectly ordinary
object and cast it in an entirely new light. Hughes does this with the thistles
of today's poem - transforming them from humble weeds into a symbol of strength
and resistance. As George Macbeth says,

"[Thistles] is a short paean of praise to the unkillable virtue of heroism. By
presenting this quality through the nature of part of the vegetable, rather than
the animal, kingdom, Hughes contrives to give it an air of naturalness and
inevitability, as if heroism like the flowers in spring is something which must
go on for ever."

Of course, the fact that it mentions Icelandic frost and Viking gutturals makes
it utterly irresistible to someone like me...

thomas.

[Links]

Hughes' poetry is centred on the natural world, as our previous offerings
testify:

'The Thought Fox', a poem about being visited by the Muse: poem #98

'Hawk Roosting', a depiction of the ruthless egotism of a tyrant: poem #42

Martin once ran a week of poems loosely based on the theme of 'defiance';
here they are: poem #34, poem #36, poem #38.

The Fitful Alternations of the Rain -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

(Poem #416) The Fitful Alternations of the Rain The fitful alternations of the rain, When the chill wind, languid as with pain Of its own heavy moisture, here and there Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

A nice if somewhat bleak little fragment - I've always felt that if one must
endure bad weather, the thing to do is to endure it in style :) And there
does seem to be something about wind and rain that has inspired countless
fits of prose and poetry - whether due to the profound effect the weather
has on one's moods and emotions, or simply as an omnipresent reminder of the
sheer uncontrolled scale of nature (see links).

Though I do have to wonder why he rhymed 'there' with 'atmosphere' -
nice as Shelley's imagery may have been, the sound of his verse was
frequently less than perfect. (Of course, one could always argue that this
is better than technically perfect but not very poetic verse, and that
Shelley has quite rightly chosen the words he wanted to use to convey his
imagery first, and bothered about the form later; my point is that it's
perfectly possible to have both, and that someone writing structured verse
has an obligation to his readers to get it right).

Notes:

 These are among the many short fragments from Shelley's MSS. published by
 Mary Shelley, the poet's wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839. There she
 entitles this poem Rain

        -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/shelley15.html

Links:

As promised, no shortage of poems about wind and rain:
  poem #226, poem #96, poem #117, poem #200.

There is, unsurprisingly, an overlap with sea poetry (one of my favourite
genres) - here are a couple of examples:
  poem #326, poem #27 (the excerpt at the end).

And what catalogue of gales and dark clouds would be complete without the
following poem? poem #343

- martin