Favourite Poems?

[droodzilla]

I've been thinking about this one a lot lately:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

It's all nicely unpacked here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70138/wallace-stevens-the-emperor-of-ice-cream

I found the comments about that notoriously difficult seventh line especially helpful.

Why now? Probably because the death of the Queen has put thoughts of mortality into my head (not that I plan to shuffle off anytime soon). Also it's hard to read about the funeral arrangements being made for the poor old woman in the Stevens poem, without contrasting it with the opulence of the state funeral we are all witnessing.

But this isn't another anti-monarchy thread. More than anything, I think it's a great poem, weighty with moral seriousness, despite the occasionally playful language.

Feel free to share any other poems that grab you here - serious or not.

 

[ff1d1l]

I've always liked this - it's funny, mysterious and surreal, and local. Graves wrote it in a Welsh accent, apparently.

Welsh Incident - Robert Graves

But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.’
‘What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?’
‘Nothing at all of any things like that.’
‘What were they, then?’
‘All sorts of queer things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,
All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,
Though all came moving slowly out together.’
‘Describe just one of them.’
‘I am unable.’
‘What were their colours?’
‘Mostly nameless colours,
Colours you’d like to see; but one was puce
Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.
Some had no colour.’
‘Tell me, had they legs?’
‘Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.’
‘But did these things come out in any order?’
What o’clock was it? What was the day of the week?
Who else was present? How was the weather?’
‘I was coming to that. It was half-past three
On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining.
The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu
On thrity-seven shimmering instruments,
Collecting for Caernarvon’s (Fever) Hospital Fund.
The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth,
Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,
Were all assembled. Criccieth’s mayor addressed them
First in good Welsh and then in fluent English,
Twisting his fingers in his chain of office,
Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand,
Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward
Silently at a snail’s pace. But at last
The most odd, indescribable thing of all
Which hardly one man there could see for wonder
Did something recognizably a something.’
‘Well, what?’
‘It made a noise.’
‘A frightening noise?’
‘No, no.’
‘A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?’
‘No, but a very loud, respectable noise —
Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning
In Chapel, close before the second psalm.’
‘What did the mayor do?’
‘I was coming to that.’

 

[Seeker_UK]

If Robert Graves misbehaves,
It's the talk'a Mallorca.

 

[alanbeeb]

I asked my brother to read Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 at my wedding. But being a civil wedding in England, at the time, not sure if it still the case, no mention was allowed in any readings that might pertain to religious matters! So the following was not permitted, simply because of the use of the word "heaven".

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.​

So I took my revenge on the Registrar and had my brother read John Fuller's Valentine instead. in hindsight I'm glad of it - it certainly got a few laughs!

The things about you I appreciate
May seem indelicate:
I'd like to find you in the shower
And chase the soap for half an hour.
I'd like to have you in my power
And see your eyes dilate.
I'd like to have your back to scour
And other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
To chase you screaming up a tower
Or make you cower
By asking you to differentiate
Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I'd like successfully to guess your weight
And win you at a fête.
I'd like to offer you a flower.​

I like the hair upon your shoulders,
Falling like water over boulders.
I like the shoulders too: they are essential.
Your collar-bones have great potential
(I'd like your particulars in folders
Marked Confidential).​

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,
I like the way your lips disclose
The neat arrangement of your teeth
(Half above and half beneath)
In rows.​

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.
Your upper arms drive me berserk.
I like the way your elbows work.
On hinges …​

I like your wrists, I like your glands,
I like the fingers on your hands.
I'd like to teach them how to count,
And certain things we might exchange,
Something familiar for something strange.
I'd like to give you just the right amount
And get some change.​

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup.
I like your legs when you unwind them.
Even in trousers I don't mind them.
I like each softly-moulded kneecap.​

I like the little crease behind them.
I'd always know, without a recap,
Where to find them.​

I like the sculpture of your ears.
I like the way your profile disappears
Whenever you decide to turn and face me.
I'd like to cross two hemispheres
And have you chase me.
I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.
I'd like you to embrace me.​

I'd like to see you ironing your skirt
And cancelling other dates.
I'd like to button up your shirt.
I like the way your chest inflates.
I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt
Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.​

I'd like you even if you were malign
And had a yen for sudden homicide.
I'd let you put insecticide
Into my wine.
I'd even like you if you were Bride
Of Frankenstein
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's
Jekyll and Hyde.
I'd even like you as my Julian
Or Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan.
How melodramatic
If you were something muttering in attics
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean
Mathematics.​

You are the end of self-abuse.
You are the eternal feminine.
I'd like to find a good excuse
To call on you and find you in.
I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin,
And see you grin.
I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe,
I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin
I'd like to make you reproduce.​

I'd like you in my confidence.
I'd like to be your second look.
I'd like to let you try the French Defence
And mate you with my rook.
I'd like to be your preference
And hence
I'd like to be around when you unhook.
I'd like to be your only audience,
The final name in your appointment book,
Your future tense.​

 

[mandryka]

I like the sound of poetry. A musical thing. These three lines by Hopkins, for example

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.


or these by Donne


As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:


Or this by Burns


When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousin, at the nappy,
And gettin fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

And this by Herbert - I like the idea and the sound both in this one, the whole poem is a favourite


I struck the board, and cry’d, No more.
I will abroad.
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the rode,
Loose as the winde, as large as store.

 

[Simon Dawson]

Two of my favourites are "Chicken Town" by John Cooper Clark and "Strawberry Hill" by Ted Hughes. I blame a very good 5th from English teacher.

 

[Tantris]

I've been thinking about this one a lot lately:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

It's all nicely unpacked here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70138/wallace-stevens-the-emperor-of-ice-cream

I found the comments about that notoriously difficult seventh line especially helpful.

Why now? Probably because the death of the Queen has put thoughts of mortality into my head (not that I plan to shuffle off anytime soon). Also it's hard to read about the funeral arrangements being made for the poor old woman in the Stevens poem, without contrasting it with the opulence of the state funeral we are all witnessing.

But this isn't another anti-monarchy thread. More than anything, I think it's a great poem, weighty with moral seriousness, despite the occasionally playful language.

Feel free to share any other poems that grab you here - serious or not.

That’s an interesting poem. That dense seventh line (‘Let be be the finale of seem’) is key in a poem that calls attention to its language and syntax from the start. The essay you linked to does give one strong view of that line, based on reading it as ‘Let “be” be the finale of seem’, and interpreting that as a call for reality rather than artifice, which is then linked to the image of ice cream as a metaphor for the transitory nature of life.

However that line could also be read as ‘“Let be, “be” (as) the finale of seem’. This offers a different meaning, that the truth of someone’s life should not displace the perception of that person at the time of their death. The word ‘finale’ also suggests a person’s life as being a series of scenes, and hence whether writing is a mirror to reality, or a means of imaginative escape. What I’m getting at is that the seventh line can be read simultaneously in two ways which contradict each other. You can then imagine that during the bustling and sensuous kitchen scene in the first verse, different conversations are being held, some to talk about her as she liked to be seen, and others to offer 'home truths'. Isn't this what most wakes are like?

For similar reasons, the final line in the second verse can also be read in different ways. This is why I like reading poetry, including the late poems of Thomas Hardy, and also Geoffrey Hill;

While friends defected, you stayed and were sure,
fervent in reason, watchful of each name:
a signet-seal’s unostentatious gem
gleams against walnut on the escritoire,

focus of reckoning and judicious prayer.
This is the durable covenant, a room
quietly furnished with stuff of martyrdom,
lit by the flowers and moths from your own shire,

by silvery vistas frothed with convolvulus;
radiance of dreams hardly to be denied.
The twittering pipistrelle, so strange and close,

plucks its curt flight through the moist eventide;
the children thread among old avenues
of snowberries, clear-calling as they fade.

 

[jimbob75]

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.


'Roll the Dice'. Bukowski

 

[Mike Reed]

The boy stood on the burning deck,
His feet were in the water,

Longfellow

PS That's about as close to poetry as I get

 

[ciderglider]

For A -level English I had to read Robert Lowell. Dissecting his poems was hard work, but very rewarding. However, I've not read a word by him since.

 

[davidlf]

Blue Remembered Hills

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A.E. Housman

 

[droodzilla]

For A -level English I had to read Robert Lowell. Dissecting his poems was hard work, but very rewarding. However, I've not read a word by him since.

I get the impression that Lowell's reputation is somewhat diminished now (these things ebb and flow with literary fashion) but his "For the Union Dead" is another favourite of mine:

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die—
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year—
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

That last phrase - a savage servility slides by on grease - makes me think of Tony Blair (and quite a few other politicians).

 

[mandryka]

Setting by Feldman -- not the most HIP version, but my favourite

Spotify – Three Voices - song and lyrics by Morton Feldman

 

[droodzilla]

I've always liked this - it's funny, mysterious and surreal, and local. Graves wrote it in a Welsh accent, apparently.

Welsh Incident - Robert Graves

But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.’
‘What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?’
‘Nothing at all of any things like that.’
‘What were they, then?’
‘All sorts of queer things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,
All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,
Though all came moving slowly out together.’
‘Describe just one of them.’
‘I am unable.’
‘What were their colours?’
‘Mostly nameless colours,
Colours you’d like to see; but one was puce
Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.
Some had no colour.’
‘Tell me, had they legs?’
‘Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.’
‘But did these things come out in any order?’
What o’clock was it? What was the day of the week?
Who else was present? How was the weather?’
‘I was coming to that. It was half-past three
On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining.
The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu
On thrity-seven shimmering instruments,
Collecting for Caernarvon’s (Fever) Hospital Fund.
The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth,
Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,
Were all assembled. Criccieth’s mayor addressed them
First in good Welsh and then in fluent English,
Twisting his fingers in his chain of office,
Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand,
Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward
Silently at a snail’s pace. But at last
The most odd, indescribable thing of all
Which hardly one man there could see for wonder
Did something recognizably a something.’
‘Well, what?’
‘It made a noise.’
‘A frightening noise?’
‘No, no.’
‘A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?’
‘No, but a very loud, respectable noise —
Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning
In Chapel, close before the second psalm.’
‘What did the mayor do?’
‘I was coming to that.’

That's great, thanks. Reminds me a bit of Tristram Shandy.

 

[droodzilla]

I asked my brother to read Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 at my wedding. But being a civil wedding in England, at the time, not sure if it still the case, no mention was allowed in any readings that might pertain to religious matters! So the following was not permitted, simply because of the use of the word "heaven".

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.​

So I took my revenge on the Registrar and had my brother read John Fuller's Valentine instead. in hindsight I'm glad of it - it certainly got a few laughs!

The things about you I appreciate
May seem indelicate:
I'd like to find you in the shower
And chase the soap for half an hour.
I'd like to have you in my power
And see your eyes dilate.
I'd like to have your back to scour
And other parts to lubricate.
Sometimes I feel it is my fate
To chase you screaming up a tower
Or make you cower
By asking you to differentiate
Nietzsche from Schopenhauer.
I'd like successfully to guess your weight
And win you at a fête.
I'd like to offer you a flower.​

I like the hair upon your shoulders,
Falling like water over boulders.
I like the shoulders too: they are essential.
Your collar-bones have great potential
(I'd like your particulars in folders
Marked Confidential).​

I like your cheeks, I like your nose,
I like the way your lips disclose
The neat arrangement of your teeth
(Half above and half beneath)
In rows.​

I like your eyes, I like their fringes.
The way they focus on me gives me twinges.
Your upper arms drive me berserk.
I like the way your elbows work.
On hinges …​

I like your wrists, I like your glands,
I like the fingers on your hands.
I'd like to teach them how to count,
And certain things we might exchange,
Something familiar for something strange.
I'd like to give you just the right amount
And get some change.​

I like it when you tilt your cheek up.
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup.
I like your legs when you unwind them.
Even in trousers I don't mind them.
I like each softly-moulded kneecap.​

I like the little crease behind them.
I'd always know, without a recap,
Where to find them.​

I like the sculpture of your ears.
I like the way your profile disappears
Whenever you decide to turn and face me.
I'd like to cross two hemispheres
And have you chase me.
I'd like to smuggle you across frontiers
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers.
I'd like you to embrace me.​

I'd like to see you ironing your skirt
And cancelling other dates.
I'd like to button up your shirt.
I like the way your chest inflates.
I'd like to soothe you when you're hurt
Or frightened senseless by invertebrates.​

I'd like you even if you were malign
And had a yen for sudden homicide.
I'd let you put insecticide
Into my wine.
I'd even like you if you were Bride
Of Frankenstein
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian's
Jekyll and Hyde.
I'd even like you as my Julian
Or Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan.
How melodramatic
If you were something muttering in attics
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of Boolean
Mathematics.​

You are the end of self-abuse.
You are the eternal feminine.
I'd like to find a good excuse
To call on you and find you in.
I'd like to put my hand beneath your chin,
And see you grin.
I'd like to taste your Charlotte Russe,
I'd like to feel my lips upon your skin
I'd like to make you reproduce.​

I'd like you in my confidence.
I'd like to be your second look.
I'd like to let you try the French Defence
And mate you with my rook.
I'd like to be your preference
And hence
I'd like to be around when you unhook.
I'd like to be your only audience,
The final name in your appointment book,
Your future tense.​

Blimey, that's news to me - no "religious" poems allowed at civil ceremonies. Sounds like political correctness gone mad!

Really like the Valentine poem - reminiscent of John Cooper Clarke's, "I Wanna be Yours" (he's a big softy really!).

 

[droodzilla]

Setting by Feldman -- not the most HIP version, but my favourite

Spotify – Three Voices - song and lyrics by Morton Feldman

I should have guessed tha Feldman would do something like that. A lovely piece.

It reminds me that jazz bassist, Steve Swallow, set some Robert Creeley poems to music, with Steve Kuhn on piano, and Creeley speaking his own words. It could have all gone horribly wrong but it works surprisingly well. There are two or three albums out there, somewhere.

On your earlier post, I like the other three excerpts, but Gerard Manley Hopkins has a special place in my heart, as he is one of the first poets I ever connected with. I was a maths and science geek but the enthusiasm of my english teacher, and the strangeness of Hopkins' language, cut through, and I realised there was something really interesting going on. It kindled a lifelong love of poetry.

 

[droodzilla]

That’s an interesting poem. That dense seventh line (‘Let be be the finale of seem’) is key in a poem that calls attention to its language and syntax from the start. The essay you linked to does give one strong view of that line, based on reading it as ‘Let “be” be the finale of seem’, and interpreting that as a call for reality rather than artifice, which is then linked to the image of ice cream as a metaphor for the transitory nature of life.

However that line could also be read as ‘“Let be, “be” (as) the finale of seem’. This offers a different meaning, that the truth of someone’s life should not displace the perception of that person at the time of their death. The word ‘finale’ also suggests a person’s life as being a series of scenes, and hence whether writing is a mirror to reality, or a means of imaginative escape. What I’m getting at is that the seventh line can be read simultaneously in two ways which contradict each other. You can then imagine that during the bustling and sensuous kitchen scene in the first verse, different conversations are being held, some to talk about her as she liked to be seen, and others to offer 'home truths'. Isn't this what most wakes are like?

For similar reasons, the final line in the second verse can also be read in different ways. This is why I like reading poetry, including the late poems of Thomas Hardy, and also Geoffrey Hill;

While friends defected, you stayed and were sure,
fervent in reason, watchful of each name:
a signet-seal’s unostentatious gem
gleams against walnut on the escritoire,

focus of reckoning and judicious prayer.
This is the durable covenant, a room
quietly furnished with stuff of martyrdom,
lit by the flowers and moths from your own shire,

by silvery vistas frothed with convolvulus;
radiance of dreams hardly to be denied.
The twittering pipistrelle, so strange and close,

plucks its curt flight through the moist eventide;
the children thread among old avenues
of snowberries, clear-calling as they fade.

Thanks, that's an excellent point about the seventh line. Like you say, that's the beauty of (good) poetry - it has a depth of meaning that evades any straightforward, single paraphrase. I think you're right to pick up on the use of the word "finale" (something the essay I linked to misses). It's a word associated with drama and music, and I'm sure it is deliberately chosen here to evoke the idea of artifice. The suggestion (for me) is that even what we think of as cold reality is itself just another representation, another way that things "seem" to us. So, as you say, it tends to undermine the reading of the line proposed by the essay.

I'm quite ignorant of Geoffrey Hill's work, but that excerpt makes me want to read more!

 

[Finnegan]

“Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number.”

 

[Andy Stephenson]

Robert W. Service was the best selling poet of the first half of the 20th century, yet isn't really all that well known now.

Here's one of his that is relevant to us! Some of the spelling is, I believe, deliberately misspelled to give a flavour of the locality.

The Gramophone at Fond-du-Lac.

Now Eddie Malone got a swell grammyphone to draw all the trade to his store;
An sez he: "Come along for a season of song the like ye had niver before".
Then Dogrib an' slave and Yellow Knife brave an' Cree in his dinky canoe,
Confluated near to see and to hear Ed's grammyphone make it's dayboo.

Then Ed turned the crank, an' there on the bank they squatted like bumps on a log,
For acres around there wasn't a sound, not even the howl of a dog,
When out of the horn there sudden was born such a marvellous elegant tone,
An' then like a spell on that auddyence fell the voice of its first grammyphone.

"Bad medicine!" cried old Tom, the One-Eyed, and made for to jump in the lake;
But no one paid heed to his little stampede, so he guessed he had made a mistake.
Then Roll-in-the-Mud, a chief of the blood, observed in choice Chippewayan;
"You've brought us canned beef, an' now it's my belief that this here's a case of "canned man"."

Well though I'm not strong on the Dago in song, that sure got me goin' for fair.
There was Crusoe and Scotty, an' Ma'am Shoeman Hank an Melber an' Bonchy were there.
Twas silver and gold, an' sweetness untold to hear all them big guinneys sing;
An' thick all around an' inhalin' the sound, them Indians formed in a ring.

So solemn they sat, an' they smoked an' they spat, but their eyes sort o' glistened an' shone;
Yet niver a word of approvin' occurred till that guy Harry Lauder came on.
Then hunter of moose an' squaw an' papoose just laughed till their stummicks was sore;
Six times Eddie set back that record an' yet they hollered and hollered for more.

I'll never forget that frame-up, you bet, them caverns of sunset agleam;
Them still peaks aglow, them shadders below, an' the lake like a petrified dream;
The teepees that stood by the edge of the wood; the evening star blinkin' alone;
The peace an' the rest, an final an' best, the sound of Ed's grammyphone.

Then sudden an' clear there rang on my ear a song mighty simple an' old;
Heart-hungry an' high it thrilled to the sky, all about "silver threads in the gold."
'Twas tender to tears, an' it brung back the years, the mem'ries that hallow an' yearn;
'Twas home-love an' joy, 'twas the thought of my boy.....an' right there I vowed I'd return.

Big Four-finger Jack was right at my back, an' I saw with a kind o' surprise,
He gazed at the lake with a heartful of ache, an' the tears irrigated his eyes.
An' sez he: "Cuss me, pard! But that there hits me hard; I've a mother does nuthin' but wait.
"She's turned eighty-three an' she's only got me, an' I'm scared it'll soon be too late."

*******

On Fond-du-Lac's shore, I'm hearing once more, that blessed old grammyphone play.
The summer's all gone, an' I'm still livin' on in the same old haphazardous way.
Oh, I cut out the booze, an' with muscles and thews I corralled all the coin to go back;
But it wasn't to be: He'd a mother, you see, so I - slipped it all to Four-Finger Jack.

 

[Dogberry]

An excerpt suitable for our times?

"Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord
Wha struts, an stares, an a’ that
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that
For a’ that, an a’ that
His ribband, star, an a’ that
The man o’ independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a’ that

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a’ that
But an honest man’s aboon his might –
Guid faith, he mauna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an a’ that
Their dignities, an a’ that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth
Are higher rank than a’ that"