The Old Woman -- Joseph Campbell

Guest poem sent in by P. G. Murthy

(Poem #1713) The Old Woman As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face. As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done, Her brood gone from her, And her thoughts as still As the waters Under a ruined mill. -- Joseph Campbell

I am entranced by the quiet simplicity of this short poem by Joseph
Campbell, an Irish Poet. The lines move with easy grace tracing the sad
universal tale of a woman and her sacrifice as she moves along life to "the
beauty of an aged face" before reaching the lonely furrowed, faded
existence.

P.G.Murthy

[Links]

We've run one Joseph Campbell poem before [Poem #338]. There's a short
biographical note attached there.

In an Artist's Studio -- Christina Rossetti

(Poem #1712) In an Artist's Studio One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer greens, A saint, an angel;--every canvass means The same one meaning, neither more nor less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light; Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. -- Christina Rossetti

Note: 'canvass' is an archaic spelling, but appears (as far as I can tell
from online reproductions of the poem) to be the one Rossetti used.

On first reading this poem, it struck me as a rather Shakespearean sonnet,
in spirit if not in form. A common sentiment, a nice but unsurprising poem
written around it. However, a second reading drew me to focus on the lines

    Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
  Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

and I have to wonder - was she wan with waiting for the artist to look up
from his dreams and his canvas, and see her as she was? Rossetti seems to be
taking the common "forever see your beloved as they were" cliche and
subjecting it to a long, hard look, in a poem that is far less romantic than it

appears.

martin

Rhymes (?) -- Henry S Leigh

(Poem #1711) Rhymes (?) My life -- to Discontent a prey -- Is in the sere and yellow leaf. 'Tis vain for happiness to pray: No solace brings my heart relief. My pulse is weak, my spirit low; I cannot think, I cannot write. I strive to spin a verse -- but lo! My rhymes are very rarely right. I sit within my lowly cell, And strive to court the comic Muse; But how can Poesy excel, With such a row from yonder mews? In accents passionately high The carter chides the stubborn horse; And shouts a 'Gee!' or yells a 'Hi!' In tones objectionably hoarse. In vain for Poesy I wait; No comic Muse my call obeys. My brains are loaded with a weight That mocks the laurels and the bays. I wish my brains could only be Inspired with industry anew; And labour like the busy bee, In strains no Genius ever knew. Although I strive with all my might, Alas, my efforts all are vain! I've no afflatus -- not a mite; I cannot work the comic vein. The Tragic Muse may hear my pleas, And waft me to a purer clime. Melpomene! assist me, please, To somewhat higher heights to climb. -- Henry S Leigh

As Calverley noted in "Lovers and a Reflection", "Rhymes are so scarce in
this world of ours" - and, oft and anon, the hard-worked poet's natural
frustration with the state of affairs spills over into verse. Here Leigh
takes a simple idea and spins it into a neat bit of self-referential verse -
so neat, in fact, that his use of homophones in place of proper rhymes is
not instantly obvious. (The abab rather than aabb rhyme scheme helps
somewhat.)

On the flip side, while self referential poetry is a rich and oft-tapped
source of comic verse, the effect is far likelier to be mild amusement than
hilarity, and the poem itself is seldom memorable. Calverley's "Lovers and
a Reflection" is an exception, I'll admit, but more due to its quotability
than its funniness; today's poem, on the other hand, is irretrievably Minor.
Still, that is no real fault, especially in a piece of light verse like
today's - I derived a moment of amusement from reading it, and Leigh
doubtless derived an equal satisfaction from its composition.

martin

Biography:
  Leigh, Henry Sambrooke (1837-1883), English poet.

  If anyone has a more extensive biography, please write in.

Madeira, M'Dear -- Michael Flanders

(Poem #1710) Madeira, M'Dear She was young, she was pure, she was new, she was nice She was fair, she was sweet seventeen He was old, he was vile, and no stranger to vice He was base, he was bad, he was mean He had slyly inveigled her up to his flat To view his collection of stamps And he said as he hastened to put out the cat The wine, his cigar and the lamps "Have some madeira, m'dear You really have nothing to fear I'm not trying to tempt you, that wouldn't be right You shouldn't drink spirits at this time of night Have some madeira, m'dear It's very much nicer than beer I don't care for sherry, one cannot drink stout And port is a wine I can well do without It's simply a case of 'chacun a son gout' Have some madeira, m'dear" Unaware of the wiles of the snake in the grass And the fate of the maiden who topes She lowered her standards by raising her glass Her courage, her eyes and his hopes She sipped it, she drank it, she drained it, she did He quietly refilled it again And he said as he secretly carved one more notch On the butt of his gold-handled cane "Have some madeira, m'dear, I've got a small cask of it here And once it's been opened, you know it won't keep Do finish it up, it will help you to sleep Have some madeira, m'dear, It's really an excellent year Now if it were gin, you'd be wrong to say yes The evil gin does would be hard to assess (Besides it's inclined to affect me prowess) Have some madeira, m'dear" Then there flashed through her mind what her mother had said With her antepenultimate breath "Oh my child, should you look on the wine that is red Be prepared for a fate worse than death!" She let go her glass with a shrill little cry Crash! tinkle! it fell to the floor When he asked, "What in Heaven?" she made no reply Up her mind, and a dash for the door "Have some madeira, m'dear", Rang out down the hall loud and clear A tremulous cry that was filled with despair As she fought to take breath in the cool midnight air "Have some madeira, m'dear" The words seemed to ring in her ear Until the next morning, she woke up in bed With a smile on her lips and an ache in her head And a beard in her ear 'ole that tickled and said "Have some madeira, m'dear" -- Michael Flanders

We've run a couple of Flanders and Swann pieces before, but neither of them
highlighted one of my favourite things about the duo's songs - the sheer,
unabashed *cleverness* of the lyrics. Like Gilbert before him (and Lehrer
after him), Flanders was adept at leaving the listener simultaneously
entertained by the humour and consciously impressed by the ingenious
crafting of the words. (This is a chancy thing to do in more serious verse,
where cleverness can be distracting and hence detrimental to the central
thrust, but with humour it works very well indeed.)

Today's song has the double bonus of being a particularly neat piece of
extended wordplay, and of working well even divorced from the music. (Some
of my other favourites, like "Misalliance", end up sounding a bit flat when
I try to read them as pure 'poetry'.) It is also, I believe, one of Flanders
and Swann's best-known works, possibly partly due to the Limeliters' having
covered it and brought it to a fresh audience. Needless to say, the music
does add a whole new dimension to it, and I highly recommend getting hold of
the three-CD "The Complete Flanders and Swann" (which isn't, but is well
worth having anyway).

Parenthetically, the figure of speech used in constructions like "he
hastened to put out the cat / The wine, his cigar and the lamps" is 'zeugma'
(I won't go into the fine shades of distinction between zeugma and syllepsis,
but it's worth looking up). Pope was fond of it too, for example in the
following from The Rape of the Lock:

  Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey
  Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

"Madeira M'dear" is, unsurprisingly, often cited in discussions of zeugma;
it remains the best example of the form I've encountered.

martin

[Links]

A biography of Flanders:
  http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/flanders.html

And of Swann (whose genius is sadly unapparent on the printed page)
  http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/biog.html

More on zeugmas (zeugma? zeugmata?)
  http://www.tristate.edu/Community_Read/things_they_carried_tierney.htm

Cuckoo Song -- Anonymous

Guest poem submitted by Bill Whiteford :

(Poem #1709) Cuckoo Song Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wude nu- Sing cuccu! Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu; Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth, Murie sing cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, well singes thu, cuccu: Ne swike thu naver nu; Sing cuccu, nu, sing cuccu, Sing cuccu, sing cuccu, nu! -- Anonymous

GLOSS:  lhude] loud.  awe] ewe.  lhouth] loweth.  sterteth] leaps.  swike]
cease.

I stumbled across this the other day, while trying to find out more about
cuckoos; why they sing, that sort of thing. I now realise it's the origin of
the phrase most usually rendered as "summer is a-comin' in", which is
interesting.  What I like about it is that the anonymous author (or more
likely, authors) was hearing the same noise that I am, some 800 years later.

Here in Scotland the cuckoos call most insistently in the month of May.
Since they sing as long as there's daylight, that's a long time this far
north. The minstrels who would have passed this around would tap into the
same feelings we have when we we're outdoors now at this time: it's nice to
hear the cuckoo song  ("well sings thu, cuccu") but they don't half go on
("ne swike thu naver nu")! Hope it's not too obscure.

Bill Whiteford.

[Links and Stuff]

Here's the Columbia Encyclopedia on today's poem:

"Sumer Is Icumen In", an English rota or round composed c.1250. It is the
earliest extant example of canon, of six part music, and of ground bass.
Four tenor voices are in canon and two bass voices sing the pes, or ground,
also in canon. The secular text is in Wessex dialect, and in the same
manuscript source, from Reading Abbey in England, is a Latin text to adapt
the tune for church use. The attribution to the monk John of Fornsete, who
kept the records of Reading Abbey, is no longer credited.
        -- http://www.bartleby.com/65/su/SumerIsI.html

For a picture of the original illuminated manuscript, follow this link:
  http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/harl978/sumer.htm
The above website also includes a translation into "modern" English, notes,
a full glossary, and a lengthy bibliography. Plus instructions on how to
sing the song karaoke-style, from the original manuscript.

Richard Thompson opened his "1000 Years of Popular Music" tour with a
version of this song; see
  http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=117