[408] Caliban at Sunset

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh@>:

Was re-reading "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" and ran across this poem by Percy
Gorringe (the "bloke with side whiskers" who loves Florence Craye).  He is
talking with Bertie at Brinkley Manor (Aunt Dahlia's place) and they are
watching a particularly fruity sunset, which Bertie describes as "being aflame
with glorious technicolour"  ....

I stood with a man
Watching the sun go down.
The air was full of murmurous summer scents
And a brave breeze sang like a bugle
From a sky that smouldered in the west,
A sky of crimson, amethyst, gold and sepia
And blue as blue were the eyes of Helen
When she sat
Gazing from some high tower in Ilium
Upon the Grecian tents darkling below.
And he,
This man who stood beside me,
Gaped like some dull, half-witted animal
And said,
"I say,
Doesn't that sunset remind you
Of a slice
Of underdone roast beef?"

	-- P. G. Wodehouse

What a lovely anticlimax - Wodehouse does it really well, using just the sort of
stuff a mediocre poet would write, with all the typical conceits (florid
"poetic" language, classical allusions, attempts to describe a sunset ...) and
then bringing in the bit about the sky being like "underdone roast beef", which
is in really good, simple English, unlike the rest of the poem.

Kind of reminds me of Wordsworth's poem "Peter Bell" - something about a guy who
sees only "a flower" where others see a beautiful blue primrose.  I've often
seen "Peter Bell" contrasted with "Daffodils", btw.

Suresh.