Could someone please help me analyse this poem:


I.M. Walter Ramsden ob. March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford
Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day
He’s dead.
Let monographs on silk worms by other people be
Thrown away
Unread
For he who best could understand and criticize them, he
Lies clay
In bed.

The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the panes
All night;
That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the brains
All right,
Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,
Drain’d white.

Crocus in the Fellows’ Garden, winter jasmine up the wall
Gleam gold.
Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot fall
Long, cold.
Master, Bursar, Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors, all
Feel old.

They remember, as the coffin to its final obsequations
Leaves the gates,
Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,
Kitchen din,
Cups and plates,
And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead generations
Coming in,
From Eights.


(Thank you very much, all help is appreciated.... Josine)

And the getting of bump suppers

Some of you won't know. There are rowing races (eight oarsmen, so Eights) between the colleges. The boats start at intervals and the aim is to catch up and "bump" the boat that started ahead of you. [en.wikipedia.org]

It's by Sir John Betjeman (pronounced bechaman, if memory serves), and is an elegy/obituary notice for Walter Ramsden. What's "I.M.", an Interior Minister? Not sure. Apparently Wally read the obituary notices every day. Is "obsequations" a word? A new one for me, if so. Betjeman mentions things about Ramsden, much the way one would recall such attributes speaking at a funeral.

The form is complicated, apparently Sir John's own invention? Some take-off on sapphics, perhaps. That is, long lines, with a short trimeter, dimeter or monometer (in this case) finish, probably merely for emphasis. Usually one sees them as quatrains, with three long ones and one shorty. Here, the long lines appear to be of eight iambic & anapestic feet and (mostly) an iambic single foot for the punch. Rhymes are abab, etc. Endings mix both masculine and feminine for the long lines, all single-syllable masculine on the shorts.

For extra credit, look up 'amphimacer', and explain how that is the foot used for such a line as "Kitchin din" or "Cups and plates". Could these be anapests instead of amphimacers? Make your own case.

For a prettier format on the poem, see: [people.zeelandnet.nl]

The I.M. is for In Memoriam.

This poem has a complex pattern of long and short lines, with five short lines in each of the first and last stanzas, compared with three in the others. When I first read it I was struck by the unnatural emphasis placed on the words 'be' and 'he' rhymed at the end of lines 3 and 5 in stanza 1, and by the seemingly deliberate contrasting fatuity of some of the short lines, and by the unrealism of imagining that ivy taps the panes. I thought the tone was that of an outsider mocking, if not sneering at, the deceased's demise and the vanities of life in the cloistered groves of academia. It reminded me of Thomas Hardy's pompously absurd poem about the Titanic, 'The Convergence of the Twain'.

Betjeman was however an Oxonian, and though he failed his final exams and had to leave without a degree, I haven't heard that he had a grudge against the place. He made some life-long friends there. Not sure whether Ramsden was one of them, or whether - like C.S.Lewis - he was a don whom Betjeman didn't get along with. Re-reading this poem (especially in the prettier format on that zeelandnet site!), I'm rather coming round to the view that it was meant to be affectionate, not mocking, and to express pity and sadness in a suitably quirky way.

The strange line patterns, and the images selected, can be read as reflecting the eccentricities cultivated in the beloved 'City of Dreaming Spires'. The images gathered in stanzas 3 and 4 are bathed in a certain golden glow of arcadian recollection. As for the way those silly short lines let down the long lines with an anti-climactic thump, well pitiably there's no bigger let-down to life than death, and nothing stupider than the expression on the face of a corpse.

Thank you all so much for your help! The information you have given me is incredibly useful.

Oxonian? Now, why on earth wouldn't that be Oxfordian? Strange folks, these Brits. Yeah, I know, Oxonia, but even so. Don't even get me started on Cantabrigian. I wonder what they call folks from Canterbury - Cambrians?

I wonder what they call folks from Canterbury - Cambrians?

Could be Cantuarians.

Yeah, and folks from Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow are Mancunians, Liverpudlians and Glaswegians. No way to guess if you aren't told.

I don't know what it is for Canterbury, but it ain't Cambrians - that means the Welsh. Quite the opposite direction, from London.

You are right, Hugh, about someone from Cambridge being a Cantabrigian. It's so often shortened to Cantab., that all these years I've wrongly thought it was Cantabrian. I now read in my dictionary that that refers to a member of an ancient warlike people inhabiting a region of northern Spain! Could be a summer campus of course – somewhere to get a tan (isn’t Spain supposed to be sunny?) after too long in the foggy fens of Cambridgeshire.

Oxfordian would seem logical for someone from Oxford, but it’s taken, at least for people. That label now means someone who supports the theory that Edward de Vere (1550-1604), Earl of Oxford, wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare. So the people of Oxford remain Oxonians. For things however, Oxfordian also means ‘of or pertaining to Oxford’ (according to the SOED). Never say the Brits aren’t half logical.

Your post prompted me to wonder whether there was a name for a member or graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge universities. Bingo, it’s Oxbridgean. Simple compared to Cantabrigian, but perhaps those good folks from just Cambridge avoid using a ‘d’ or an ‘e’ in their spelling just to confuse folks who are just Oxonians.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2006 02:02AM by IanB.

I take Umbrage (untabrigies?) at that remark about Whitman

The shopping mall where he was born is near my home, and he has a damn fine chocolate sampler to boot.

Plus which (plubrigian) his grandson Charles shot all those people from that tower in texas, because of remarks such as these

The Whitman sampler is similar to the Whizzo Quality Assortment

A picture of the Walt Whitman Mall can be found here at 1892:

[www.eskimo.com]

and here:

[images.google.com]

Virtually an heirloom! Definitely a classic!

jar an ply never rhymed



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/01/2022 10:57PM by JohnnySansCulo.

I'm told a post was deleted before I had the chance to view a response to my post.

Please feel free to PM or email me, then, sice we don't want to upset the delicate censor.