except that he is seldom remembered ...
.
The Lazy Writer
Bert Leston Taylor
In summer I'm disposed to shirk,
As summer is no time to work.
In winter inspiration dies
For lack of out-door exercise.
In spring I'm seldom in the mood,
Because of vernal lassitude.
The fall remains. But such a fall!
We've really had no fall at all.
Ilza, that poem reminds me of this one by Ogden Nash:
More About People
by Ogden Nash
When people aren't asking questions
They're making suggestions
And when they're not doing one of those
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes
And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you
They employ you.
Anybody at leisure
Incurs everybody's displeasure.
It seems to be very irking
To people at work to see other people not working,
So they tell you that work is wonderful medicine,
Just look at Firestone and Ford and Edison,
And they lecture you till they're out of breath or something
And then if you don't succumb they starve you to death or something.
All of which results in a nasty quirk:
That if you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.
Les
Post Edited (01-03-05 22:05)
Yes, BLT is almost always forgotten nowadays, although he appears a lot in the old light verse texts on my bookshelves. Here is one that does not appear on the internet (that I have found), and I am betting it is a parody of something else I have in mind. Kudos to the first person to guess the original work:
Or ever a lick of Art was done,
Or ever a one to care,
I was a Purple Polygon,
And you were a Sky-Blue Square
You yearned for me across a void,
For I lay in a different plane,
I'd set my heart on a Red RhomBOID, (italics in his)
And your sighing was in vain.
You pined for me as well I knew,
And you faded day by day,
Until the Square that was heavenly Blue,
Had paled to an ashen grey.
A myriad years or less or more,
Have softly fluttered by,
Matters are much as they were before,
Except 'tis I that sigh.
I yearn for you, but I have no chance,
You lie in a different plane,
I break my heart for a single glance,
And I break said heart in vain.
And ever I grow more pale and wan,
And taste your old despair,
When I was a Purple Polygon,
And you were a Sky-Blue Square.
Why so Pale and Wan?
By Sir John Suckling
WHY so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do 't?
Prithee, why so mute?
Quit, quit for shame! This will not move;
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The devil take her!
Sounds like this one, Hugh.
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every fustrum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It wispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of the love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, thir pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus, and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos (2*phi)!
Les
No winners yet. I believe it will stand out like the proverbial thumb when spotted, though.
The rhyme scheme matches the Sorrow of Love, which we were discussing on the other thread, but I don't see any connection there.
What about the one from which this is taken, Hugh:
Yet wake not from thy slumbers, - rest thee well,
Amidst thy fields of amber asphodel,
Thy lily-sprinkled meadows, - rest thee there,
To mock all human greatness: who would dare
To vent the paltry sorrows of his life
Before thy ruins, or to praise the strife
Of kings' ambition, and the barren pride
Of warring nations! wert not thou the Bride
Of the wild Lord of Adria's stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were not the nations given as thy prey!
And now - thy gates lie open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailed warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!
Les
Post Edited (01-04-05 17:15)
Or ever the battered liners sank
With their passengers to the dark,
I was head of a Walworth Bank,
And you were a grocer's clerk.
Kipling.
Hugh says this is a "parody" of something else.......so it is making fun of something else.........Roses are red....Violets are blue......Not my final answer. Can I use a lifeline?
Marty
Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was the King of Babylon
And you were a Christian Slave.
Hugh, will you at least say if it's something by Dorothy Parker?
ns nailed it.
To W.A.
OR ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon
And you were a Christian Slave.
I saw, I took, I cast you by,
I bent and broke your pride.
You loved me well, or I heard them lie,
But your longing was denied.
Surely I knew that by and by
You cursed your gods and died.
And a myriad suns have set and shone
Since then upon the grave
Decreed by the King of Babylon,
To her that had been his Slave.
The pride I trampled is now my scathe,
For it tramples me again.
The old resentment lasts like death,
For you love, yet you refrain.
I break my heart on your hard unfaith,
And I break my heart in vain.
Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
The deed beyond the grave,
When I was a King in Babylon
And you were a Virgin Slave.
--William Ernest Henley
Surely Kipling is parodying the same work?
OR EVER the battered liners sank
With their passengers to the dark,
I was head of a Walworth Bank,
And you were a grocer’s clerk.
I was a dealer in stocks and shares,
And you in butters and teas,
And we both abandoned our own affairs
And took to the dreadful seas.
Wet and worry about our ways—
Panic, onset, and flight—
Had us in charge for a thousand days
And a thousand-year-long night.
We saw more than the nights could hide—
More than the waves could keep—
And—certain faces over the side
Which do not go from our sleep.
We were more tired than words can tell
While the pied craft fled by,
And the swinging mounds of the Western swell
Hoisted us heavens-high . . ,
Now there is nothing—not even our rank—
To witness what we have been;
And I am returned to my Walworth Bank;
And you to your margarine
I wonder how many other versions there may be. And moreover, why did the original spark such creativity by its readers?
I saw a note that it also prompted the movie, The Admirable Crichton, but I have not seen it, so am not sure. Who is "W.A."? Dunno that either.
Kipling and Henley were friends, you know ...
I thought it read "a christian slave" ( ok, virgin makes more sense...)
William Allingham, maybe ? but then, why ?
(1824 - 1889) Irish Poet and Editor
I didn't think the Kipling was the original, but couldn't find the Henley.
This is obvious:
[www.theotherpages.org] />
"I was a King in Babylon, and you were a Christian slave..."
Gotta go teach the young cannibals...
two cannibals are eating a clown, and one says to the other, does this taste funny to you?
A cannibal clan I'll describe
Decided all fat to proscribe,
Cutting down on their sweets,
No more snacking, or treats,
Thus becoming the first diet tribe.
Let them eat Carbs
Marie Antoinettekins
Heck, that one has an unacceptable identical rhyme.
A cannibal once gave his wife
The gift that's loved by grannies;
The best she'd ever had in life:
A box of farmer's fannies.