Poems To Return To
Turns out I like a lot of poems, for someone 'not into poetry'.
Inspired by prof serious’s post of yesterday.
I’ve always said I’m not very into poetry.
I’m sure that’s true, compared to some people. I don’t ‘get’ a lot of poetry and have always found it hard to memorise, compared to songs.1 I rarely pick up a book of poems to read.
But when I had children, it turned out there were a surprising number of poems I realised wanted to introduce them to. And that process, it turned out, made me read them with greater appreciation, revisiting old friends and sometimes discovering others, unknown, by familiar authors.
Below are twenty poems I return to, that for various reasons send a tingle down my spine.2 A short extract of each - from the beginning, middle or end - are included. I hope you enjoy.
In alphabetical order.
The Destruction of Sennacherib - Lord Byron
This was in the post that prompted mine - but how could I leave it out? One where the sheer beauty of the language causes shivers.3
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
…
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Duck’s Ditty - Kenneth Grahame
One of the rare ones I know by heart, I would recite to my children as babes, to get them to sleep. Its words conjure the world of the River Bank, with Mole, Rat, Otter, Badger and, of course, Toad.
Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!
Excelsior - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I have a beautiful picture-book copy of Hiawatha’s Childhood which I love, and my children have also.4 Yet it is that ‘banner with that strange device’ which with its mystery has wormed itself into my brain and stuck there.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling
If is the classic choice, and it is indeed glorious. The Female of the Species is the funniest. Now Chil the Kite, Buddha at Kamakura and Recessional all have their case to make. But as I make my way through middle age, and look at the state of the world, it is increasingly The Gods of the Copybook Headings that return again and again.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll
The quintessential nonsense poem - and another I know by heart. As an aside, excellent French and German translations can be found in Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau de Marot.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The Jumblies - Edward Lear
How pleasant to know Mr Lear! His longer poems have always had greater appeal to me than his limericks - and again, aided perhaps by a gloriously illustrated compendium that both I and my children have enjoyed.5
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
The King’s Breakfast - A. A. Milne
Beloved volume, packed full of beloved poems. How could I choose just one? But choose one I must, and there is really no other contender.
The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told
The Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney
Said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."
The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Between this and The Charge of the Light Brigade it was a close thing, but ultimately this won out.6 Very long, and very beautiful.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Lepanto - G. K. Chesterton
I discovered Chesterton as an adult rather than a child - which was a glorious thing to discover! The Donkey packs a tremendous punch in its 16 lines, but there is something particularly wonderful about an epic poem about something that took place in (relatively) modern history, rather than ancient myth.7
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
The Listeners - Walter de la Mare
I can remember reading this as a young child and desperately wanting to know more than the few, haunting, lines of the poem reveal.
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.