[649] A Song of the Weather

The aforementioned Irresistible Followup...

January brings the snow
Makes your feet and fingers glow
February's Ice and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet
Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wer't not so unkind
April brings the sweet spring showers
On and on for hours and hours
Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day
June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops
In July the sun is hot
Is it shining? No, it's not
August cold, and dank, and wet
Brings more rain than any yet
Bleak September's mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood
Then October adds a gale
Wind and slush and rain and hail
Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog
Freezing wet December then:
Bloody January again!
(January brings the snow
Makes your feet and fingers glow).

	-- Michael Flanders

"Oh, to be in England, now that April..." - no, wait a minute, May - um, no,
June? July? Ah, wotthehell - I'm *glad* I'm not there <g>. No particular
comment on this amusing catalogue of the seasons - perhaps someone more
local would care to comment on its accuracy?

Like Tom Lehrer on the other side of the Atlantic, Flanders and Swann wrote
and recorded a disappointingly small set of songs, but what's there is all
brilliant. I've contemplated running some of my personal favourites, like
'Misalliance', 'A Transport of Delight' and 'Madeira M'Dear', but held off
due to a reluctance to run song lyrics without the music on which they
depend. Still, like Gilbert before him, Flanders' lyrics are clever enough
(and funny enough) to stand on their own. This is particularly true since,
again like Gilbert, he revels in complicated rhyme schemes and metrical
patterns, and at times the most deliciously contrived of rhymes. (Sadly,
today's piece is not representative of the latter tendencies).

Links:

 There's a biography at
 http://members.tripod.com/~TimothyPlatypus/FaS/biography.html

 From the excellent F&S site at
 http://timothyplatypus.tripod.com/FaS/index.html

 This was an Irresistible Followup to Goulder's 'The January Man', poem #648

 Other songwriters in the same vein include Tom Lehrer and W. S. Gilbert,
 both of whom have featured on Minstrels before. See
 www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html

And finally:

 Many thanks to Ch'kai for introducing me to Flanders and Swann in the first
 place.

-martin

From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@>

This is a parody of Sara Coleridge's "Calendar", from her "Pretty 
Lessons in Verse":

January brings the snow;
Makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots and gillyflowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasant,
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire and Christmas treat.

    -- Sara Coleridge

(from http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Farm/9753/poem_files/seasons.htm)

From: "Bradley L. Ward" <bward@>

Hi

A great parody on the traditional poem.Did the poet perchance live in
England?