The Secret

George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930)

'The Secret'

Nightingales warble about it,
    All night under blossom and star;
The wild swan is dying without it,
    And the eagle crieth afar;
The sun he doth mount but to find it,
    Searching the green earth o'er;
But more doth a man's heart mind it,
    Oh, more, more, more!

Over the gray leagues of ocean
    The infinite yearneth alone;
The forests with wandering emotion
    The thing they know not intone;
Creation arose but to see it,
    A million lamps in the blue;
But a lover he shall be it
    If one sweet maid is true.

Christmas Day

Now Christmas Day has come round again —
and poor North Polar Bear has got a bad pain!
They say he’s swallowed a couple of pounds
of nuts without cracking the shells! It sounds
a Polarish sort of thing to do —
but that isn’t all, between me and you:
he’s eaten a ton of various goods
and recklessly mixed all his favourite foods,
honey with ham and turkey with treacle,
and pickles with milk. I think that a week'll
be needed to put the old bear on his feet.
And I mustn’t forget his particular treat:
plum pudding with sausages and turkish delight
covered with cream and devoured at a bite!
And after this dish he stood on his head —
it's rather a wonder the poor fellow’s not dead!

Absolute ROT:
I have not got
a pain in my pot.

                                            Rude fellow!

I do not eat
turkey or meat:
I stick to the sweet.
Which is why
(as all know) I
am so sweet myself,
you thinuous elf!
Goodby!
                                            He means fatuous
                            No I don't, you’re not fat,
                            but thin and silly.
You know my friends too well to think
(although they’re rather rude with ink)
that there are really quarrels here!
We’ve had a very jolly year
(except for Polar Bear’s rusty nail);
but now this rhyme must catch the Mail —
a special messenger must go,
in spite of thickly falling snow,
or else this won’t get down to you
on Christmas day. It’s half past two!
We’ve quite a ton of crackers still
to pull, and glasses still to fill!
Our love to you on this Noel—
and till the next one, fare you well!

Father Christmas
Polar Bear
Ilbereth
Paksu and Valkotukka

J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas: Centenary Edition, ed. by Baillie Tolkien (London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2019; 1976), pp. 174-77.

Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception

Mary Modur of grace we cry to þe,
Moder of mercy and of pyte,
Put vs fro be Fendes fondyng,
And helpe vs at oure last endyng;
And to þi Sone oure pes þou make
þat He on vs no wreke take.
To ȝow I cri wyth mylde steuen,
All þe halowes þat are in Heuen,
Helpe or Criste my gylth forgyue,
And will Hym serue will I lyue.

Rossell Hope Robbins, ‘Popular Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology, 36.4 (1939), 337-50 (p. 345) [Caius Camb. 71, fol. 17b].

The Snail

 'The Snail'

See the sick and wounded snail,
   Sick in mind and body both,
   Travelling through the undergrowth
Or asparagus and kale,
Exiled from the herd (or horde)
Where he once was overlord.

See him as his eyeballs glaze;
   Nasty sorts of flies and things,
   Such as every poet brings
Into poems nowadays,
Buzz about the eyes and tail
Of this old unhappy snail.

Ants arise to greet the dawn,
   Beetles burnish up their mail,
   But the old unhappy snail
Creeps towards the croquet lawn,
Where the loathly blackbird jumps,
Looking out for slithery lumps.

He recalls the moment when
   Long ago, a thing uncouth,
   He arrived without a tooth,
Youngest of a batch of ten.
(Snails recall their infancy
For more brightly than do we.)

How he gambolled round about,
   Always at his mother’s side
   Filled with lustihood and pride,
Feeding upon Brussels-spout,
Turnip-tops and cauliflower.
(Pity him in his lone-hour!)

Oft in those remembered morns
   With his tiny friends at play
   He would butt, and so would they,
Making trial of his horns,
Butt until he felt unwell
And retired to his shell.

Till at last his hour occurred;
   Fiercely then, and roaring loud,
   He attacked the leader proud,
Chieftain of the hornéd herd,
Whilst the lady snails looked on,
Smiling at their paragon.

Foaming at the lips with slime,
   Each the hated foe assails
   (Battles between rival snails
Occupy no end of time);
Butting hard but butting slow,
These went on two weeks or so.

See him victor at the last;
   See the victim creep away,
   Tameless even in decay,
From the treacherous herd outcast,
Whilst the hero of our plot
Stands the head-snail of the lot.

Stands resplendent in his pride
   Waving to and fro his horns;
   Not a beetle but he scorns,
Not an earthworm far and wide
But he tosses from his path,
Bellowing in berserk wrath.

How he altered! Now he’s been
   Broken like the one before;
   All his face is smeared with gore;
Showing undisguised chagrin
He is crawling, as I said,
Through the vegetable bed.

Soon to meet the blackbird grim
   Perching on the fateful tree,
   While the last snail (Number Three),
Having now defeated him,
Lords it, till in turn he fails,  
And a fourth——
                       Oh! —— these snails!

Evoe [E.V. Knox], Parodies Regained (London: Methuen , 1921), pp.  95-98.

This edition contains some fun illustrations by George Morrow. Originally published for Punch magazine.

Uphill

Christina Rossetti
‘Uphill’

  Does the road wind uphill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
  A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
  You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
  Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
  They will not keep you waiting at that door.
 
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
  Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
  Yea, beds for all who come.

The Dream

Louise Bogan
'The Dream'

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.

Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.

Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.

But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

The Journey Always Begins in a Forest

 And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,
   Ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,
   Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
   Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
   Much can they prayse the trees so straight and hy,
   The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall,
   The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar neuer dry,
   The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all,
The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall.

The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours
   And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still,
   The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours,
   The Eugh obedient to the benders will,
   The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill,
   The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound,
   The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,
   The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round,
The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound.

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way,
   Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne;
   When weening to returne, whence they did stray,
   They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,
   But wander too and fro in wayes vnknowne,
   Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,
   That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne:
    So many pathes, so many turnings seene,
That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been.

The Fairie Queene, I.8-10

   Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.

   Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

  Halfway through our life's quest,
I found myself in a dark forest,
As the straight path was lost.

   Oh how hard it is to talk of such a thing,
This forest so wild, bitter and strong
the mere thought renews the dreading.

Inferno, I.1-6.

Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queene, ed. by A.C. Hamilton, 2nd edn (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), pp. 32-33. Dante Alighieri, Commedia, ed. by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, 3 vols (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), I, pp. 7-10. My translation.

Trees Burning

But how the fyr was maked upon highte,
Ne eek the names that the trees highte,
As ook, firre, birch, aspe, alder, holm, popler,
Wylugh, elm, plane, assh, box, chasteyn, lynde, laurer,
Mapul, thorn, bech, hasel, ew, whippeltree --
How they weren feld shal nat be toold for me

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight's Tale, 2919-24.

On the Road Again

Christina Rossetti
‘Uphill’

  Does the road wind uphill all the way?
   Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
   From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
  A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
  You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
  Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
  They will not keep you waiting at that door.
 
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
  Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
  Yea, beds for all who come.

The Moth

Walter de la Mare  
'The Moth'

Isled in the midnight air,
Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
The flame cries, 'Come!'

Lovely in dye and fan,
A-tremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
Uplifts her face:

Stares from her glamorous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
To her strange tryst.

The Ant

'The Ant'
Ogden Nash

The ant has made herself illustrious
By constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?

Cottleston Pie

A.A. Milne (1882-1956), Winnie Ille Pu, trans. by Alexander Lenard (London: sumptibus Methuen, 1994; 1958), pp. 52-53:

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Cano aenigmata, canis ac tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Volitant aves, dic volitas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum cru
Sibilo bene, dic sibilas tu?
Crustulum, crustulum, crustulum crum
Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.

A.A. Milne, 'Cottleston Pie'

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Learn to Read or Take a Beating

[item 33]

    of an a.b.c.
This a.b.c. you do read
    but little do prevail
vnless y^t you take heede
    well whipt shalbe your tail.

Steven W. May, Henry Stanford's Anthology: an Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York; London: Garland, 1988), p. 44.

Written by Henry Stanford for Robin Carey (later Sir Robert) the eldest son of Sir Edmond Carey, third surviving son of Henry Carey Lord Hunsdon. From a group of poems written to assist Tudor children in learning to write poetry in poulter’s metre. Poem dated 1 Jan 1586/87.

Oxford Bookshops

That they are pleasing, all who ever buy
In Oxford shops can surely testify:
Of all the shops I name or do not name
I and their other buyers can make claim
That, of our purchased parcels laid in pile
Each one was rendered friendly, with a smile,
A charming word or jest that gave a grace
Of silver to the penny’s commonplace,
So that a spirit companied the thing
Borne in the paper package tied with string,
So that it seemed a thing not bought and sold
But given, out of friendship and worth gold.

It is a pleasant pastime to go eyeing
Where things attract and tempt you into buying;
The dustless shining things which subtly wait
Yourself, the willing fish for this the bait.
Among these verses I have written down
The fruits of shopping about Oxford town,
Each with the happy memory of faces
Who greet me friendly at the customed places,
And of the streets in which the windows shine,
That are the magnets to these friends of mine;
For here, new pleasures purchasers attend,
They find the looked-for treasure and a friend.

I seek few treasures, except books, the tools
Of those celestial souls the world calls fools.
Happy the morning giving time to stop
An hour at once in Basil Blackwell’s shop,
There, in the Broad, within whose booky house
Half England’s scholars nibble books or browse.
Where’er they wander blessed fortune theirs,
Books to the ceiling, other books upstairs.
Books, doubtless in the cellar, and behind
Romantic bays where iron ladders wind,
And in odd nooks sometimes in little shelves,
Lintot’s and Tonson’s calf-bound dainty twelves.

From John Masefield, ‘Shopping in Oxford’ in Poems by John Masefield (London: William Heinemann, 1946; 1923), pp. 870-871.

John Fisher

Henry E.G. Rope (1880-1978), ‘Blessed John Fisher’
June, 1914

In that grey head and forehead sorrow-scor’d,
Those strong dark eyes with tender love alight,
The face of one that liveth at the height
Of the o’erwhelming trust of his liege Lord,
Radiant with sovran grace on him outpour’d,
With steadfast calm unearthly benedight:
Chosen to bear the fiercest of the fight
With hell’s leagu’d powers o’er all the land abroad.
Whose swords are blunted by his only crook
Who stood alone nor left his flock their prize—
Is this intrigue’s demeanour? This his look
Over whose soul ambitions tyrannize?
O fools, who cannot read an open book!
O jaded wits, false judgements, purblind eyes!

Henry E.G. Rope, Soul’s Belfry and Other Verses (Church Stretton: The Stretton Press, 1919), p. 59.

Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Bishop John Fisher (c.1532-45), The Royal Library, Windsor

Summer Cicadas

‘Summer’
Lawrence Durrell

The little gold cigale
Is summer’s second god, the lovers know it,
His parched reverberating voice
Deepens the gold thirst of the noons
And follows the black sun’s long
Fig-ripening and vine-mellowing fall
So leisurely from heaven’s golden car
Day by successive day to end it all . . .

And where the Latin heat has stretched
The skin of valleys will his voice
Rubbing and scraping at the lover’s ear
Oracles of past suns recall,
Prodigals of leisure and brown skins,
Wine mixed with kisses and the old
Dreamless summer sleeps they once enjoyed
In Adam’s Eden long before the Fall.

Lawrence Durrell, Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), p. 191.

Whitsun

'Whitsun' by Sylvia Plath

This is not what I meant:
Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows,
Bald eyes or petrified eggs,
Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets,
Lard-pale, sipping the thin
Air like a medicine.
The stopped horse on his chromium pole
Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze.
Your shirt of crisp linen
Bloats like a spinnaker. Hat brims
Deflect the watery dazzle; the people idle
As if in hospital.
I can smell the salt, all right.
At our feet, the weed-mustachioed sea
Exhibits its glaucous silks,
Bowing and truckling like an old-school oriental.
You're no happier than I about it.
A policeman points out a vacant cliff
Green as a pool table, where cabbage butterflies
Peel off to sea as gulls do,
And we picnic in the death-stench of a hawthorn.
The waves pulse like hearts.
Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie
Sea-sick and fever-dry.

The Perils of Studying Latin Literature

There was an Old Man of Vesuvius,
Who studied the works of Vitruvius;
When the flames burnt his book,
To drinking he took,
That morbid Old Man of Vesuvius.

Edward Lear

Notes on a Christmas Carol

 ‘I Saw Three Ships’

I saw three ships come sailing in,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
I saw three ships come sailing in,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
And what was in those ships all three,
    On Christmas day in the morning?

Our Saviour Christ and his lady,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
Our Saviour Christ and his lady,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

Pray whither sailed those ships all three,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
Pray whither sailed those ships all three,
    On Christmas day in the morning?

O they sailed into Bethlehem,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the bells on earth shall ring,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

And all the Souls on Earth shall sing,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the Souls on Earth shall sing,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

Then let us all rejoice amain,
    On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
Then let us all rejoice, amain,
    On Christmas day in the morning.

William Sandys, Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (London: Richard Beckley, 1833), pp. 112-13.

Notes:
It is sometimes asserted that the earliest version of this carol is the one published by John Forbes in 1666. An earlier copy of the Forbes’ version, however, is found, written in an early seventeenth-century hand, in the St Andrews Psalter (also known as the Thomas Wood or Thomas Wode Psalter).

Wilhelm Bolle, ‘Forbes’ “Songs and fancies”, das erste in Schottland gedruckte Liederbuch’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 131 (1913), 320-33 (p. 320).

The Forbes/Wode version includes Saint Michael and Saint John on the miraculous voyage to (landlocked) Bethlehem:

         Cantus. Three Voices.
All sones of Adam, rise up with me,
Go praise the blessed Trinitie.
Go praise the blessed Trinitie.
Cry Kyrie, with Hosanna, sing Alleluja now.
Save us all, Emanuel.
Then spake the Archangel Gabriel, said,
Ave, Mary mild, the Lord of Lords is with thee,
now shall you go with child:
Ecce ancilla domini.
Then said the Virgin, as thou hast said, so mat it be,
Welcom be heavens King welcom be heavens King.
There comes a ship far sailing then,  
Saint Michel was the stieres-man:
Saint John sate in the horn:
Our Lord harped, our Lady sang,
And all the bells of heaven they rang,
On Christs Sunday at morn, On Christs Sunday at morn,
Then sang the Angels all and some,
Lauda Deum tuum, Si-on.
The sons of Adam answered, then sang,
Glore be to the God and man, The Father and the Sprite,
Also with honor and perpetual joy, with honor and perpetual joy.

John Forbes, Cantus, Songs and Fancies, 2nd edn (Aberdeen: Printed by John Forbes, 1666), fols. K1^v-K2^v.

Another interesting version, noted by Lewis Davis, includes mention of the medieval transfer of the relics of the Magi to Cologne:

I saw three ships come sailing by, by, by,
I axed ’em what they’d got aboard-board-board,
They said they’d got three crawns-crawns-crawns,
I axed ’em where they was taken to-to-o, to-o; to-ooö,
They said they was ganging to Coln upon Rhine, Co-ln, Co-ln,
I axed ’em where they came frae-frae-frae,
They said they came frae Bethlehem-Beth-Beth

   ‘The above version of the story of the translation to Cologne of the crania of the Magi in 1162 by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who carried them off from S. Eustorgio, Milan, and presented them to Cologne Cathedral, was noted by Mr. Lewis Davis of Pinner, and sent by him to Mr. Baring Gould, probably c. 1895, as the latter prints it in his Garland of Country Songs under the unpromising, indeed deterrent heading of “All round my hat” from a fancied resemblance of the melody to that street-tune as it had then become! In the legend, the original number of the ships seems to have been three, the reputed skulls of the Magi having each been carried in a separate ship, presumably for the greater honour of each. But when persons were substituted for these relics the number of ships was made to correspond-so we get two ships for “Joseph and his fair lady,” and still later, one only for “The Saviour.” ’

Anne G. Gilchrist, ‘The Three Kings of Cologne’, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 5.1 (1946), 31-40 (pp. 33-34).

Also compare:
‘The North Ship’
   Legend

I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.

The first ship turned towards the west,
Over the sea, the running sea,
And by the wind was all possessed
And carried to a rich country.

The second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.

The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.

The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:

But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.

Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (London: The Marvell Press, 2003), p. 36.

They Told Me

Walter de la Mare
‘They Told Me’

They told me Pan was dead, but I
   Oft marvelled who it was that sang
Down the green valleys languidly
   Where the grey elder-thickets hang.
 
Sometimes I thought it was a bird
   My soul had charged with sorcery;
Sometimes it seemed my own heart heard
   Inland the sorrow of the sea.
 
But even where the primrose sets
   The seal of her pale loveliness,
I found amid the violets
   Tears of an antique bitterness.