[1068] Lovers and a Reflection

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
  (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
  Where woods are a-tremble with words a-tween.

Thro' God's own heather we wonned together,
  I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
  And flitter-bats wavered alow, above;

Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
  (Boats in that climate are so polite,)
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
  And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!

Thro' the rare red heather we danced together
  (O love my Willie,) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was glorious weather,
  Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:

By rises that flushed with their purple favors,
  Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen,
We walked or waded, we two young shavers,
  Thanking our stars we were both so green.

We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
  In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
  Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes:

Song-birds darted about, some inky
  As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds;
Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky--
  They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!

But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes,
  Or hang in the lift 'neath a white cloud's hem;
They need no parasols, no goloshes;
  And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.

Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst His heather),
  That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt--(it was perfectly charming weather)--
  Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:

And Willie 'gan sing--(Oh, his notes were fluty;
  Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea)--
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
  Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry":

Bowers of flowers encountered showers
  In William's carol--(O love my Willie!)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe tomorrow
  I quite forget what--say a daffodilly.

A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"
  I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden" of course in "Eden"--
  A rhyme most novel I do maintain:

Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
  And all least furlable things got "furled";
Not with any design to conceal their glories,
  But simply and solely to rhyme with "world."

O if "billows" and "pillows" and "hours" and "flowers,"
  And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
  And carted or carried on wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out--ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be.

 	-- Charles S. Calverley

The late P. G. Wodehouse once remarked upon the lamentable lack of rhymes
for 'love' in English, forcing generations of poets to make trite references
to doves and stars above[1]. Calverley has much the same idea here, though he
takes it a step further, pointing out, in his usual aside-laden style, the
sheer abundance of traditionally 'poetic' words whose sole raison d'etre is
to provide a time-honoured rhyme.

Alongside his spot-on commentary on the "brave rhymes of an elder day",
Calverley sets his sights on a number of other poetic cliches - the
deliberately archaic language, exaggeratedly florid imagery, stirring
sentiment (sentiment should be stirred frequently, lest it overflow) and
other devices that collectively bespeak Poetry.

The flip side of the coin is that it is hard to write good 'bad' poetry, and
what "Lovers and a Reflection" gains in reflexivity, it loses in quality.
This is an amusing enough poem, but it is nowhere as memorable as works by,
say, Lewis Carroll or Wendy Cope.

[1] one can only imagine the poet Wordsworth's delight at first encountering
that princess of rivers, the fair Dove

-martin

Links:

 "How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be" - see also Poem #190
 "Rhyme most novel": Poem #343
 All things furl'd and furlable:
   Poem #89
   Poem #148
   Poem #787

http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Tennyson/tennyson_contents_the_voyage.htm
   http://www.bartleby.com/101/822.html
   http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/records/madeline.html
   and (don't miss the rhyme!) http://www.bartleby.com/101/356.html

PS: Many thanks to Thomas for covering while I had email problems

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1068.html

From: John Burke <john.burke@>

Hi--

as you say, it's harder to write good "bad" poetry than most people think.
In the event you don't know it, here's an invocation to bad poetry's Muse,
by one of the editors of "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse." The
Alexandrines are partularly nice, I think.

--best, jvb

[Note: the names in caps are those of poets found in the collection; "Namby
Pamby" was the nickname of one Ambrose Phillips, the Della Cruscans were a
school of poets in Florence whose name was borrowed by one Robert Merry. All
the subjects listed here--oysters, bugs, the diseases of sheep etc.--are
actually themes of poems in the book.]

PROEM

(from "The Cacohymniad," Book I)

Bad Verse I sing, and since 'twere best, I deem,
T' employ a style that suits my swelling theme,
First, in my lines some flatulence t' infuse,
I thus invoke the Muddle-headed Muse.
       Ascend, O CACOHYMNIA, from the deep,
Where BLACKMORE mumbles epics in his sleep,
While by a mud-pool endless Birthday Odes
CIBBER recites, and charms the list'ning toads;
What time his placid Pegasean steed,
Browsing along th' adjacent thistly mead,
Pricks his tall ears, and lengthens out his bray
In faithful echo of his master's lay.
Adjust thy wig, eternally awry,
And wipe the gummy rheum from either eye.
Endeavour not (vain task) to tune thy lyre,
Nor stay to renovate that rusty wire;
For in thy strain should any note be missing,
Thy sacred bird's at hand to fill the gap with hissing.
    She comes! she comes! Like castanets of Spain,
Clip-clop, clip clop, her slippers strike the plain,
While from her lips proceeds th' oracular hum:
"De-dum, de-dum, de-dumty, dum de-dum."
A gander limps with outstretch'd neck before her,
And owls and jays and cuckoos hover o'er her.
Brisk at her elbow NAMBY PAMBY skips,
Checking her chant on quiv'ring finger-tips;
And close behind, strutting in laurell'd state,
See! AUSTIN arm-in-arm with PYE and TATE.
Follows a crowd confus'd of wigs and hats:
HAYLEYS and BAYLEYS, JERNINGHAMS and SPRATS;
A horde of DELLA CRUSCANS, chanting, panting,
Thrilling and shrilling, canting and re-canting;
Bristolia's bibliopolic bard, JOE COTTLE,
Hugging three epics--and a blacking-bottle;
T. BAKER, who Steam's gospel best delivers;
The Reverend WHUR, and Georgia's pride, Doc. CHIVERS;
And ELLA, who from ev'ry pore exudes
Impassion'd transatlantic platitudes.
And who comes now, hee-hawing down the wind?
'Tis Colley's Pegasus! And these, entwin'd
In amorous embrace upon his crupper?
ELIZA COOK and MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER!
     Now the cortège, advancing, nears the spot
Where rubbish from Parnassus hill is shot.
Here batter'd tropes and similes abound,
And metaphors lie mix'd in many a mound,
And oily rags of sentiment bestrew the ground.
With shouts exultant, see! th' excited troop
Rush on the spoil, and grab and grub and scoop,
And snatch and scuffle. With indulgent mien,
Awhile the Muse surveys the busy scene;
A tow'ring Gradus-heap she then ascends,
And, hawking thrice, the toil below suspends.
Her scholars, in a nudging, shuffling line,
Attend the utt'rance of the voice divine.
Like schoolboy's of fourteen her accents thrill,
Now rumbling deep, now stridulating shrill;
And these her words, transcrib'd by my unworthy quill:

     "Not without dust and heat are prizes won.
Hot, dusty ones, your Muse applauds: well done!
Some words of counsel now, ere you disperse,
Your swag to file and flatten into verse.
     "Let others vie, as PINDAR vied before,
With eagles that monotonously soar;
The various-gifted dabchick be your model,
Skilful to splash, and flap, and wade, and waddle,
And in that art which none achieve by thinking,
Skilfull'st of all--I mean the Art of Sinking.
     "Not that I bid you never rise at all,
Or shun th' éclat that greets a sudden fall.
So, when in yard suburban we survey
The high-stretch'd panoply of Washing-day,
Zephyrs the flutt'ring crowd inspire, uplift,
Distend the shirt, and agitate the shift;
But should perchance th' afflatus breathe too strong,
The treach'rous prop precipitates the throng:
Let such sublime disaster oft attend your song.
     "Ever you'll find me, your complaisant Muse,
Quick to inspire, whate'er the theme you choose--
Dunghills, or feather-beds, or fat-tail'd rams,
Or rum, or kilts, or eggs, or bugs, or yams.
So when some dame, in some Department Store,
Her shopping-list exhausted, orders more,
The sleek assistant, outwardly unvex'd,
Smiling exclaims, 'Thenks, moddom! And the next?'
      "Behold the pompous funerary train
Of Enoch Arden, piscatorial swain.
'Mid tropic seas the luckless Bryan mark,
In process of bisection by a shark.
Hear ARMSTRONG gloat on what occurs inside you
When cook has turtle-soup'd and ven'son-pie'd you;
And list while DYER, in Miltonic metre,
Recites the ailments of the fleecy bleater.
Rejoice with YOUNG that no protective bars
Exclude commercial blessings rom the stars,
And in the Milky Way prepare to greet
A still more glorious Throgmorton Street.
Hear DARWIN, whom no scand'lous detail ruffles,
Record the love-lorn loneliness of truffles,
Friskings of vegetable lads and lasses,
Amours of oysters, goings-on of gases.
With fit solemnity let WORDSWORTH tell
How Simon's ankles swell, and swell, and swell,
And how, from Anna's couch when friends depart,
An owl, preserv'd by taxidermic art,
Can cheat the tedious time, and heal the conscious smart.
     "So sing the Masters of Bathetic Verse.
Follow their lead: do better, doing worse.
So shall your brows be crown'd with bays unwith'ring,
So shall the world be blither for your blith'ring;
So-----"
       Here she pauses, deep inhales the breeze,
And shakes the earth with cataclysmic sneeze.
The dust-heaps crumble, whirling clouds arise,
And all is blotted from my blinking eyes.

                    C[harles] L[ee]

Letchworth, January 1930