Preface

A disturbed reverie

The good dalek

Thomas (T8)

Barrows

Song of the Men's Side, by Rudyard Kipling

The threshold folk (T163)

Epiphany (T150)

"I pulled a muscle"

Plover stenography

To a goose, by Robert Southey

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Dear Sir... (T73)

I went to dine with a friend of mine...

Terra incognita

Riding in the hovercraft

Two creatures (T85)

Two Men, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Hoover Dam

Microwave on high

My dearest dust, by Catherine Dyer

I met a cat who wasn't there

New ditty (T115)

The Original Selfie

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The Aristocrat, by G. K. Chesterton

Gifts, by James Thomson

Joseph Bazalgette

Kitten toes (T76)

Six feet from a rat

A crow's ear

You are old, Father William, by Lewis Carroll

Hallelujah Simpkins (T76)

Diver gent

Song against Twitter (T47)

Yan tan tethera

You are old, Fräulein Heidi

Clerihews

Looking for thermals

Pittsburgh (T18)

Up-Hill, by Christina Rossetti

Arse, Sir Robert

Grice's maxims

Love, drink, and debt, by Alexander Brome

Puppy dreams (T117)

From a Railway Carriage, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Harry Beck

Mind. The gap.

Stations of the Cross (T74)

Cold Iron, by Rudyard Kipling

Heaven lies about us

Translation (T83)

The echoes of an amber god (T54)

Clapham Junction; Jason Binder

The Rolling English Road, by G K Chesterton

from St Peter's Complaint, by Robert Southwell

Chimney

Gladstone's Library

I always tried to write about the light (T32)

In the Neolithic Age, by Rudyard Kipling

Retweeted (T103)

Teletext Facebook

Acquainted with the dawn (T118)

After Blenheim, by Robert Southey

The bottom of the sea

Caught the sun

The Nine Worthies

Storytelling, part II (T80)

The great Panjandrum, by Samuel Foote

Berwick-upon-Tweed

from Haunted Houses, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

On first looking into an A to Z (T13)

On-sweet bathroom

Happy birthday, Eve

Mitochondria

Transplanted (T120)

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

Funeral (T87)

In bed with Gregor

On Monsieur's departure, by Elizabeth Tudor

Inheritance powder

Lucifer in Starlight, by George Meridith

Requiem for an oak (T30)

Et in arcadia Lego

Mary (T12)

The Yak, by Hilaire Belloc

Mustard gas and chemotherapy

Ode to Joy (T156)

Formal hall

A St Helena lullaby, by Rudyard Kipling

Ballade of Suicide, by G K Chesterton

Emotional rollercoaster

For night can only hide (T31)

No, by Thomas Hood

Solstice (T116)

A tree song, by Rudyard Kipling

Epictetus

My notes

Myrrh

Shooting for the moon

Song of New Year's Eve (T3)

The cloths of heaven, by W B Yeats

Here deep in the city (T77)

Mondegreens

from Similar Cases, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The stars and stripes for heifer

The blind men and the elephant, by John Godfrey Saxe

Metro gnome

Proof by elephants

Indigo

Shattered (T5)

Thou'rt a scholar

Woad Song, by William Hope-Jones

Preface

We've been travelling along this Gentle Readers road for more than a year. Even so, I hadn't realised how many pages the magazine would fill! Along the way, a picture, two poems, and the ever-changing Something Wonderful feature appeared twice a week— at least when I was well enough to write them.

In this collection, poems of mine are marked with a code such as “T17”: these numbers are indexes to a master list of all my poems. I should also mention, in case geographical references become confusing, that Kit and I moved from Runnymede in Surrey to Salford in Lancashire during the time covered by these issues.

I'm glad to have you along. Enjoy the journey!

—TJAT

Salford, November 2015

A disturbed reverie

This dates from about 1890, but I haven't been able to trace the poet. Can
any of you make a suggestion?

Lying supine on the soft, matted grasses,

Gazing up lazily into the blue

Of the sky, when the wandering wind as it passes

Opens the branches for me to look through,

Idly I ponder, and ponder, and ponder,

Thinking of nothing, yet happy and free ;

Careless of everything, idly I wonder

At the immensity opened to me.

Looking up listlessly, thoughtlessly dreaming,

Mind a vacuity, life full of joy,

All the dull world seems with happiness teeming,

With nothing to worry, or fret, or annoy.

Earth seems a paradise. Why should I trouble

Or toil to win heaven? Why, heaven is here!

Fortune is worthless, and fame but a bubble:

I scorn them both, looking into the clear

Deep blue of the sky while the wild bees are humming,

Above and around me, in harmony deep,

And over the meadows the breezes are coming

To fan me, and soothe me, and lull me to sleep.

This, this is happiness, perfect, unmeasured;

Long shall this day without blemish or fleck

Stay in my memory, lovingly treasured —

Great Scott! There's a wasp down the back of my neck!

The good dalek

The point of the Good Samaritan story is blunted if we forget the place of
the Samaritans in that culture. Here's an attempt to redress that:

"But a certain dalek saw him and took pity on him..."

Thomas (T8)

This weekend,
Sheridan Voysey
spoke to us about his experience of writing autobiography. He mentioned
that there's always a temptation to dress up your experiences when you
write them down, but it's best to avoid it, because people can detect
authenticity. People will be able to apply it better to their lives, and
they may respect you more than if you'd embroidered it.

That reminded me of this poem of mine.

They named me for my granddad's father's father;

they said he'd caught consumption in his youth

and left his son an orphan. But the truth

I learned on reading registers is rather

more horrible, but easy to explain:

his wife had died. And Thomas, left behind,

drowned deep in pain, drank gin, and lost his mind,

died sobbing in a home for the insane.

And in my brain, statistic turned to story:

a broken heart, and lovers dying young,

beyond the brittle lies of broken lungs.

But, grandpa, may I hope we'll meet in glory,

and over soda, on the other side,

I'll let you know I bear your name with pride?

Barrows

In ancient times, when a queen or a king died, their people would raise a
hill over their grave; we call these hills "barrows". You might know them
from

Fog on the Barrow-Downs

, a terrifying chapter in

The Lord of the Rings

, or

a particularly sad part

of Diana Wynne Jones's

The Time of the Ghost

:

The real thing was certainly chilling to me as a child, especially when I
saw people had built houses on top of them; I remember nightmares climbing
over barrows and finding them the great grassed-over bones of a giant.

Well, people stopped building barrows somewhere during the Bronze Age,
though they were briefly in fashion again when the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
I'd sometimes wondered why they didn't find any use for the Victorians, a
culture as obsessed with death as ours is with sex (and likewise as
squeamish about sex as ours is with death), so I was delighted to hear that
someone's building a new one. It's near Devizes in Wiltshire,
, close by Stonehenge, which seems to have been a
particularly auspicious or magical site by the crowds of ancient barrows
around the place.

Naturally, the stonemason was delighted to be asked to build a barrow. And
it seems I wasn't alone in wishing they'd come back— people from all over
the world have been asking to have their ashes interred there. You can read
more, and see pictures, at

the BBC report

.

Song of the Men's Side, by Rudyard Kipling

The barrow story reminded me of this song from

Rewards and Fairies, in the chapter about the Bronze Age flintworkers called

The Knife and the Naked Chalk

. I love how the poem feels to chant aloud, and the euphemisms they use for
"wolf" throughout.

Once we feared the Beast— when he followed us we ran,

Ran very fast though we knew

It was not right that the Beast should master Man;

But what could we flint-workers do?

The Beast only grinned at our spears round his ears—

Grinned at the hammers that we made;

But now we will hunt him for the life with the Knife—

And this is the Buyer of the Blade!

Room for his shadow on the grass— let it pass!

To left and right— stand clear!

This is the Buyer of the Blade— be afraid!

This is the great god Tyr!

Tyr thought hard till he hammered out a plan,

For he knew it was not right

(And it

is

not right) that the Beast should master Man;

So he went to the Children of the Night.

He begged a Magic Knife of their make for our sake.

When he begged for the Knife they said:

"The price of the Knife you would buy is an eye!"

And that was the price he paid.

Tell it to the Barrows of the Dead— run ahead!

Shout it so the Women's Side can hear!

This is the Buyer of the Blade— be afraid!

This is the great god Tyr!

Our women and our little ones may walk on the Chalk,

As far as we can see them and beyond.

We shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep

Tally at the shearing-pond.

We can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please,

We can sleep after meals in the sun,

For Shepherd-of-the-Twilight is dismayed at the Blade,

Feet-in-the-Night have run!

Dog-without-a-Master goes away

(Hai, Tyr aie!)

,

Devil-in-the-Dusk has run!

Then room for his shadow on the grass— let it pass!

To left and right— stand clear!

This is the Buyer of the Blade— be afraid!

This is the great god Tyr!

The threshold folk (T163)

When you stand at the sand at the end of the land

before you tread the brine

where the driftwood spells with the seaweed's shells,

your barefoot prayers at the shrine

of the unseen queen of the space between

as you pass from old to new

call the gods whose friends are the odds and ends

of the threshold folk like you.

Epiphany (T150)

I wrote this at the request of

Kathryn Rose

, as the lyrics for

a choral anthem

.

I walked in darkness. Many a lonely mile,

my eyes and footsteps hesitant and blind.

I sought a kindly light I did not find

in land or ocean, asking all the while

if lightless lives are taken in exchange

for light eternal. Still the shades of sight

would whisper, "Even I shall see the light!"

I never thought the light would look so strange.

Not in a temple, echoing and awed,

nor in a palace, glistening and grand,

nor in my home, nor any friendly land.

but distant, dirty, in a shed abroad,

I met a maiden bloody from a birth

and in her arms, the light of all the earth.

"I pulled a muscle"

A friend told me he'd pulled a muscle the night before, so I drew a cartoon
to cheer him up. (In

British slang

, "to pull" someone means to persuade them to go home to bed with you.)

Plover stenography

Stenography is a cross between shorthand and typewriting: it allows you to
type at dictation speed, around 250 words per minute. It's often used in
courtrooms, to make a permanent record of the proceedings, but it's also
used in subtitling (aka closed captioning), and in lectures to display a
textual version of the speaker's words for the benefit of deaf students.
Whatever the area, if you do a lot of typing, then putting in the effort to
learn steno might well pay off.

It takes quite a bit of practice to get good at steno, but the underlying
idea is simple: every keystroke forms a syllable. Your left fingers form
the consonants that begin the syllable, your two thumbs form the vowels,
and your right fingers form the consonants that end the syllable. Until
recently, steno equipment was specialised and very expensive, but a few
years ago

the Plover project

began to make an open source steno system. All you need to practice is a
gamer's keyboard— ordinary keyboards don't allow you to press more than a
few keys at once.

For myself, I've reached the level where I can type things in steno, but
not yet as fast as I can on QWERTY. Have a go, and let me know how you do.

To a goose, by Robert Southey

Bathos

, a sudden and incongruous change of mood, is probably the funniest thing
there is. If you do it well, the audience will laugh with you; if you do it
accidentally, they'll laugh

at

you.

Robert Southey

, an early nineteenth-century poet laureate, shows us how it's done in the
last two lines of this poem.

If thou didst feed on western plains of yore,

or waddle wide with flat and flabby feet

over some Cambrian mountain's plashy moor,

or find in farmer's yard a safe retreat

from gipsy thieves, and foxes sly and fleet;

if thy grey quills, by lawyer guided, trace

deeds big with ruin to some wretched race,

or love-sick poet's sonnet, sad and sweet,

wailing the rigour of his lady fair;

or if, the drudge of housemaid's daily toil,

cobwebs and dust thy pinions white besoil,

departed goose! I neither know nor care.

But this I know, that thou wert very fine

seasoned with sage and onions, and port wine.

"Cambrian" means Welsh. Note also the casual racism in the fifth line,
unremarkable in Southey's time, and be glad we notice it now.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

With apologies to Tenniel.

["I think I can safely say," said Humpty Dumpty severely, "that last summer
was one of the most unpleasant episodes of my entire life. Sitting on walls
here! Being dragged around by the king's horses there! There seemed no end
to it." Alice nodded with sympathy. "I hope your life became better when
the autumn came." "Why yes, child," replied Humpty Dumpty. "I had a great
fall."]

Dear Sir... (T73)

Dear Sir:— This application form,

from one potential employee,

will tell you how I should perform.

I have a first-class B.Sc.,

ten years of writing ANSI C,

some Java; Perl with DBI;

and tendencies to wander free

and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I know perhaps it's not the norm

to mention this on one's CV.

I wonder if you'd just transform

the job I'm asking for, to be

not writing code, but poetry.

Do ask your boss. It's worth a try.

He'd sing, himself, when he was three,

and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I'd stay till ten beneath a warm

duvet, and then I'd climb a tree,

my face upheld towards the storm,

or paddle barefoot in the sea.

Perhaps a friend comes round for tea.

Perhaps among the corn we'd lie

in silent solidarity

and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

Sir, I enclose an S.A.E.

I wonder if you might reply

and leave your desk to run with me,

and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I went to dine with a friend of mine...

When I was a toddler, my grandfather R.S. Hall was my usual babysitter. He
had a talent for reciting poetry, and then naturally so did I: there was
nobody to tell me people usually find it difficult. Somewhere there is a
cassette tape of him telling me poems; I'd like to put it on YouTube some
day, so you can all hear it. This is one of the poems he was fond of; I've
found copies in only a few other places, and I haven't discovered who the
poet is. Do any of you know?

(

"Famille verte"

and the rest are kinds of antique porcelain; he pronounced it "FAMai", not
"famEE" as the French do.)

I went to dine with a friend of mine

who dined off porcelain plate,

of a kind so rare it turned one's hair

to think of their possible fate:

for some were Ming and some were Ching,

whatever those names may be,

and the food was divine, and— ah!— the wine

intoxicated me.

There were ices, those on

famille rose

,

and coffee on

famille noire

,

and a choice dessert on

famille verte

preceded a fine cigar.

But alas for the end of the dinner, my friend!

for he happened his eyes to raise

as I started to rub the burning stub

on a bit of his finest glaze!

He was awfully nice, but as cold as ice,

as he rang for my coat and hat,

for Ming is a thing— and so is Ching!—

which

mustn't

be used for that!

Terra incognita

Terra incognita,

"unknown land", is a phrase that used to be written on maps in places that
hadn't yet been explored. We don't see it these days, at least not on maps
of the earth, because every last square inch is known about— or at least,
we like to think it is. In reality, we don't really know much about the
deep sea floor, nor about what goes on in the jungles of the Amazon. There
is a story that the mapmakers would write "here be dragons!" to explain why
nobody had come back with charts of the area, though there's actually only
one such map known.

One of the last pieces of

terra incognita

to disappear was a tiny island, about quarter of an acre, off the coast of
Newfoundland. Somehow, nobody had ever noticed it until the mapping
satellite

Landsat

took its photograph in 1976. The Canadian government duly despatched a
helicopter to verify the news, which lowered a scientist onto the island.
Sadly, he found no dragons. Instead, there was a large and unfriendly polar
bear which attempted to swat the scientist; he got back into the helicopter
very quickly. The island is now called

"Landsat Island"

.

Riding in the hovercraft

Kit and me riding around on a hovercraft! We were crossing

Runnymede, a meadow

near where I live at present, which happens to be the place where the

Magna Carta

was signed just under eight hundred years ago. The meadow had just been
mowed, so the air intakes of the hovercraft kept filling up with cut grass.

The hovercraft turned out to belong to

HoverAid

.
I had never previously heard of them, but I spent quite a while talking
to some of their people that day. They are an aid organisation which uses
hovercraft to get doctors, medical supplies, clean water infrastructure,
and mosquito nets to places in Madagascar which are hard to reach any other
way. One of the things I love about this world is that I keep finding
people doing good in ways I had never imagined.

Two creatures (T85)

Two creatures' eyes have seen the sun,

and now their lids are filled with dust.

But if their eyes were blue, or brown,

I cannot tell, and yet I must.

St Claire

's an Amiable Child

who sleeps secure and snug as Grant,

but who can tell me of his eyes?

(The city parks curator can't.)

And Johnson had a cat named

Hodge

who fed on oysters, and was fine;

his coat was black, but not his eyes,

whose shade I cannot now divine.

Two creatures hold me in their gaze,

and thoughts of it I can't dislodge:

the nature of your eyes, my friends,

your sleeping eyes, St Claire and Hodge?

Two Men, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

This is a poem I've loved since childhood, and

Two Creatures

above was clearly based around it. I have a mating pair of giant millipedes
(

Archispirostreptus gigas

) who live in a glass tank in my flat, and I named them Melchizedek and
Ucalegon because of this poem. (Ucalegon is the female. I would tell you
more about them, because I am very fond of them, but I risk terrifying half
my readers.)

There be two men of all mankind

That I should like to know about;

But search and question where I will,

I cannot ever find them out.

Melchizedek, he praised the Lord,

And gave some wine to Abraham;

But who can tell what else he did

Must be more learned than I am.

Ucalegon, he lost his house

When Agamemnon came to Troy;

But who can tell me who he was:

I'll pray the gods to give him joy.

There be two men of all mankind

That I'm forever thinking on:

They chase me everywhere I go:

Melchizedek, Ucalegon.

The Hoover Dam

During the Great Depression, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the
construction of the

Hoover Dam

,
then the biggest dam in the world, at a cost of about fifty million
dollars— over 800 million in today's money. It might seem odd at first
sight to pour money into public works during a recession, but the dam
provided more than hydroelectricity and water— it provided inspiration, and
for thousands of workers it provided a regular paycheque. Tens of thousands
more were kept in work at businesses where the pay was spent.

The original design for the dam was planned by the engineers, and was
severely functional. For balance,

the consortium engaged an architect, Gordon Kaufmann, and an artist, Allen
True

. Together they made the dam not just a useful artefact, not just an
inspiration, but also a thing of beauty in the (then current) Art Deco
style.

True carried out anthropological research

and based his work on ideas and patterns from nearby Native American
nations. He included a floor with a star map accurate for the night of the
dam's dedication ceremony, so that if one day a civilisation finds the dam
but can't read our writing, their astronomers can still work out when it
was built.

Microwave on high

I had to draw this because it's what I think of every time I see the
instruction "Microwave on high for two minutes".

My dearest dust, by Catherine Dyer

This poem from 1641 by Catherine Dyer is part of her husband's epitaph, and
it is the only verse of hers which survives. She must have written more
poetry than this, mustn't she? Maybe we'll find her other work hidden in a
dusty library one day, and it will change the hearts and minds of the
world. Who knows?

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty day

afford thy drowsy patience leave to stay

one hour longer: so that we might either

sat up, or gone to bed together?

But since thy finished labour hath possessed

thy weary limbs with early rest,

enjoy it sweetly: and thy widow bride

shall soon repose her by thy slumb'ring side.

Whose business, now, is only to prepare

my nightly dress, and call to prayer:

mine eyes wax heavy and the day grows old.

The dew falls thick. My blood grows cold.

Draw, draw the closéd curtains, and make room:

My dear, my dearest dust: I come. I come.

I met a cat who wasn't there

As I was going up the stair

I met a cat who wasn't there.

"Whose cat are you?" I asked of her.

She answered, "

Dr Schrödinger.

"

New ditty (T115)

The world is filled with frenzied folk

who say I'm incomplete

until I've played some game, or tried

their favourite thing to eat,

or read a certain book, or heard

some orchestra or band,

or spent a decade living rough

in such-and-such a land;

but most of all experiences,

the one that draws my praise

is walking round with nothing on,

on hot and sticky days.

I have been advised to remind you to look closely at the title.

The Original Selfie

Immediately afterwards came the Original Selfie.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

says that your thoughts are shaped by the language you use. This is a
pervasive idea; I remember as a child

discovering

Nineteen Eighty-Four

,
and the idea that you can restrict people's ability to rebel by
restricting their language. The hypothesis hasn't been widely believed by
linguists for a long time, at least not in a way that means people's
thought is necessarily restricted by the languages they speak. But there is
still research going on into whether it has a more subtle influence.

So, yes, we were just talking about tea, weren't we? Yesterday I found
myself at a very pleasant tea-party where I met a gentleman from Tanzania.
We talked about Bantu linguistics, amongst other things, and it reminded me
of a story I'd once seen in a book. Later, I found the book and scanned the
page.

The book was written by an Englishman living in Swahili-speaking parts of
Africa in the early twentieth century. In a chapter about the Bantu verb
system he digresses to explain why he couldn't get a decent cup of tea: it
turned out, he said, that because the Swahili verb "to boil" is derived
from their verb "to jump", it covers all the time from when the water
starts bubbling, whereas the English verb to boil covers only when it's
actually becoming steam. So he would say to someone, "Could you boil me
some water and make the tea?" and it would be undrinkable, until he learnt
the difference in the meaning of the verbs.

However, he doesn't tell us what stopped him making his

own

cup of tea!

The Aristocrat, by G. K. Chesterton

Language note: "The blue devil" here means depression: "the blue devils"
became "the blues", which we still have. "The blue bird" is the bluebird of
happiness. So "that is the blue devil that once was the blue bird" means
"what you once thought joy has become despair."

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay

At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).

They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,

And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;

He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,

Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;

He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,

And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery

The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;

But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,

And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay

At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;

The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;

There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,

There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;

There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,

Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,

Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,

And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:

And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;

For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word.

Gifts, by James Thomson

Give a man a horse he can ride,

Give a man a boat he can sail;

And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,

On sea nor shore shall fail.

Give a man a pipe he can smoke,

Give a man a book he can read:

And his home is bright with a calm delight,

Though the room be poor indeed.

Give a man a girl he can love,

As I, O my love, love thee;

And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,

At home, on land, on sea.

James Thomson was another Victorian; I assume he didn't think these gifts
were confined to male people. At least, I hope not.

Joseph Bazalgette

The Victorian engineers who built our railways and canals left their mark
all over the landscape. But the Victorian engineers who built our sewers
left their handiwork mostly underground and unappreciated. The sewers of
London, as with many other cities with nineteenth-century sewers, are
triumphs of careful planning and hard work, saving us daily from diarrhoea
and cholera epidemics. But of course they're like the drummer in a band:
nobody notices them unless they go wrong.

One of the Victorian sewer engineers who should be more famous is the
wonderfully-named

Sir Joseph Bazalgette

(1819-1891). As chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, he redesigned
and rebuilt London's sewers, built embankments along the Thames, and thus
helped the river begin to run clean again. One of his particularly
interesting habits was designing sewage plants in
architecturally-interesting ways, such as the

Abbey Mills

"A" building, which has often been described as "the cathedral of sewage".
I mean, just look at it.

Several more photos are here

,
including pictures of the inside.

Image by Velela, copyright 2005, cc-by-sa

Thanks to people like Bazalgette, we have pretty good toilet facilities in
England, and mostly we don't need to think about how life would be if we
didn't. But nearly half the people in the world aren't as lucky, and people
die as a result:

diarrhoea kills

two million children under five every year.

So there is an organisation called

Toilet Twinning

.
You donate some money for building toilets in developing countries, and
they twin

your

toilet over here with one of

their

toilets over there. Then they send you a photo of the toilet they've built,
and you're supposed to frame it and hang it up in your loo. And (more
importantly) you get to know that some kids are more likely to make it to
their fifth birthday.

Look at me, writing this entire article about toilets but not taking the
excuse to make puns. I tell you, I'm flushed with success.

Kitten toes (T76)

A dozen years, the length of feline days:

compared to human lives it may appear

the cats lose out. To be a human pays.

I think on this, and on companions dear:

Successive cats whose whiskered lives touched mine

Have lain upon my lap... do you suppose

Their tiptoe through the years is but a sign?

I measure out my life with kitten toes.

As they and I pursue the hilly ways

that fill our lives, “Beware! The end is near!”

“Your death is nigh!” or some such friendly phrase

will tell me that it's all downhill from here.

And soon the slope more steeply will incline,

And drop away as quickly as it rose.

You trace the arc? My life is on the line:

I measure out my life with kitten toes.

Though now, my cat, we feel the sunshine's blaze...

your windowsill is warm, the skies are clear...

yet still I feel the sun's all-seeing gaze

remind me of the coming day, I fear...

the coming day I cannot feel it shine,

and on my face the smiling daisy grows.

I only have the one, where you have nine:

I measure out my life with kitten toes.

Prince, lord of cats, may endless meat be thine!

O grant that thine immortal princely doze

may evermore upon my lap recline!

I measure out my life with kitten toes.

Six feet from a rat

*"And it is often said that, wherever you may go, you are never more than six feet away from a rat"

A crow's ear

Fig. 1: a crow's ear

You are old, Father William, by Lewis Carroll

This is famous already, but justly so.

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

"And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

"I feared it might injure the brain;

But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again!"

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,

And you have grown most uncommonly fat;

Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—

Pray, what is the reason for that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

"I kept all my limbs very supple

By the use of this ointment— one shilling the box—

Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—

Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—

What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"

said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"

This is one of the most deft of Carroll's parodies, so memorable that it
stuck in my head without my taking the trouble to learn it, and as with
many of them it has become better known than the original. The original
isn't a particularly bad poem, but awfully preachy, and executed with
rather less skill than Carroll's. Nevertheless, its author was no stranger
to a good joke (see

To a goose

above),
and I think he would have enjoyed Carroll's take on his work.

THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS, AND HOW HE GAINED THEM

by Robert Southey

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,

"The few locks which are left you are grey;

You are hale, father William, a hearty old man;

Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," father William replied,

"I remembered that youth would fly fast,

And abused not my health and my vigour at first,

That I never might need them at last."

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,

"And pleasures with youth pass away.

And yet you lament not the days that are gone;

Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," father William replied,

"I remembered that youth could not last;

I thought of the future, whatever I did,

That I never might grieve for the past."

"You are old, father William," the young man cried,

"And life must be hastening away;

You are cheerful and love to converse upon death;

Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"I am cheerful, young man," father William replied,

"Let the cause thy attention engage;

In the days of my youth I remembered my God!

And He hath not forgotten my age."

"You are cheerful and love to converse upon death."

Bet he was a riot at parties.

Hallelujah Simpkins (T76)

I wrote this one on top of a bus when I was first living away from home in
Becontree in the mid-nineties. I can't tell you what it means, for I don't
really know; I wrote it for the sound. I may set it to music one day.

Hallelujah Simpkins, Syllogism Brown,

Wandered up to Barkingside to walk around the town.

Does it make you wonder, when they ring the bell,

How they press the organ keys and sing along as well?

Syllogism wondered so he climbed the tower to see;

Hallelujah, Simpkins said, I know that I am free.

Hallelujah Simpkins, Pendlebury Jane,

Hurried to the hospital and hurried home again.

Does it make you wonder, when they run so fast,

How they know they'll ever reach the hospital at last?

Pendlebury wondered even though she couldn't run,

Hallelujah, Simpkins said, today I have a son.

Hallelujah Simpkins, Academic Smith,

Never et an orange if they couldn't eat the pith.

Does it make you wonder, if oranges can float,

Why they catch the Underground and never catch a boat?

Academic wondered so he went and caught the train;

Hallelujah, Simpkins said, and said it once again.

Hallelujah Simpkins, Concertina Flight,

Hear the song the angels sing in Dagenham tonight!

Does it make you wonder, climbing Heaven's stair,

How you'd speak to Hallelujah Simpkins, if he's there?

Simpkins only wondered whom he followed as he soared;

Hallelujah, Simpkins said, and glory to the Lord!

Diver gent

A few months ago, because a film called

Divergent

had just come out, I kept seeing the word "divergent" written down. So I
pretty much had to draw a diver gent.

Song against Twitter (T47)

I tried to say:

you make my life complete,

you put my puzzle pieces into place.

But then I tried to send it as a tweet.

It didn't fit. I thought I could delete

one part, about the joys of your embrace;

I tried to say:

you make my life complete,

but still it was too long. I thought I'd cheat

ByMergingWordsAndUsingCamelCase.

But then I tried to send it as a tweet.

It failed again. I must admit defeat.

Like Fermat's margin, Twitter lacks the space

to let me say you make my life complete.

It makes the longer forms seem obsolete.

But even Petrarch's work would meet disgrace

if cut and scaled to send it as a tweet!

And somehow public posts seem indiscreet.

I think I'd rather whisper to your face

the message that you make my life complete,

and far too full to post it as a tweet.

Yan tan tethera

Before

the English arrived in Great Britain

,
a Celtic

language akin to modern Welsh and Cornish

was spoken throughout the island south of the Forth. When the English
arrived, the culture and language was pushed to the far edges (they "drove
the Britons westward into Wales and compelled them to become Welsh", as

Sellar and Yeatman

so memorably put it), though recent genetic studies indicate that it was
more that the culture moved than the people.

And Wales and Cornwall are still with us. But for a few centuries more
there was a Celtic holdout north of the Humber, sandwiched between the
Angles below and the Picts and Scots above. The old Welsh poems and songs
call it the

Hen Ogledd

,
the Old North. It faded away in the end, but one of its particularly
interesting relics are the names of numbers used to count sheep:

Yan, tan, tethera

, pethera, pimp,

sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik.

The names of the numbers are startlingly similar to modern Welsh.

I first encountered this counting system, long before I was aware of its
interesting philology, in a book called

The Tovers

by Elisabeth Beresford. And this is, as you may have guessed, partly where
the name of Yantantessera the cat comes from. After all, there's safety in
numbers.

You are old, Fräulein Heidi

I was delighted to receive an email from gentle reader Mongoose, following
on from

You are old, Father William

last time, about a conversation she had had with her cat Heidi. I reproduce
it below with permission.

"You are old, Fräulein Heidi," the Mongoose said,

"In human years, fivescore and ten;

Yet my shoulder you make your precarious bed -

Do you think you're a kitten again?"

"In my youth," said the cat, as she washed her small form,

"I was happy to sleep on the fence;

But it's not very soft and it's not very warm,

So I think I've developed some sense."

"You are old," said the Mongoose, "my sweet little petal,

And often throw up when you fret;

Then how have you stayed in such excellent fettle

That you're never in need of the vet?"

Miss Heidi considered, and said, "On the whole

I think it's a question of diet;

It's excellent food that you put in my bowl,

But I do like a mouse on the quiet."

"You are old," said the Mongoose, "and once on a time

From danger you'd swiftly take flight;

So why is it now, though you're well past your prime,

You're perfectly willing to fight?"

"In my youth," said the cat, "I will freely admit

That I was rather easy to scare;

But I've now turned the tables - the biter is bit.

Good grief, don't you think that that's fair?"

"You are old," mused the Mongoose, "and like any cat

I know that you're partial to heat;

But you sit on the heater, and why doesn't that

Burn your stomach, your tail or your feet?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,

And only because it was you.

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I'll pee in your shoe!"

Clerihews

The ambition of Edmund Clerihew Bentley was to get a

first

at Oxford. When he didn't manage to do so, he devoted his energies instead
to an attempt to get his middle name into the dictionary. He invented a
verse form named the "clerihew", and published a collection of them,

Biography for Beginners

,
which was enough of a success that he achieved his lexicographical aim.
That book helpfully begins:

The art of Biography

Is different from Geography.

Geography is about maps,

But Biography is about chaps.

The clerihew has four lines, rhymed

aabb

;
it generally begins with the name of its subject, and it is in roughly
conversational metre. Another of

Bentley's examples

which shows their usual surreality:

I do not extenuate Bunyan's

Intemperate use of onions,

But if I knew a wicked ogress

I would lend her "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Since then, many others have been written:

here are some to be going on with

.
Feel free to send in your own compositions. And let me know: if

you

decided to get

your

name into the dictionary, what would you invent?

Looking for thermals

Human:

"What are you doing in my underwear drawer?"

Raptor:

"Looking for thermals."

Pittsburgh (T18)

Pittsburgh is a rather hilly town. I wrote this one while standing in a
small park halfway up a steep hill overlooking the city centre, as night
began to fall.

You can hear me reading it if you like.

This moment, I am God upon this town.

I compass every window spread below:

each pinprick point in total looking down

a pattern only overseers know.

I feel the human flow and ebb each minute

perceiving both with every passing breath;

each lighted room has home and hoping in it,

each darkening a sleeping, or a death.

And nothing, nothing makes it wait to darken;

had I the power it should be shining still.

Some other one you have to hope will hearken,

some other on some yet more lofty hill—

whom priests and people plead to, not to be

as powerless to hold these lights as me.

Up-Hill, by Christina Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

— Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

— From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

— A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

— You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

— Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

— They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

— Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

— Yea, beds for all who come.

In Chesterton's phrase, the decent inn of death.

Arse, Sir Robert

Queen Victoria

: "For your invention of the typewriter: arse, Sir Robert."

Sir Robert:

"('Arise', your Majesty.)"

Queen Victoria:

"Well, it looks like arse here."

Grice's maxims

Sometimes you read an idea which changes the way you view the world. For
me, one such experience was reading about the work of

Paul Grice

(1913-1988). Grice studied what people try to achieve when they're having a
conversation, and he reduced it to a set of rules of co-operation: rules
that the person who's speaking generally tries to follow, and the people
listening expect to hear followed. The four rules have become known as

the Gricean maxims

,
and they are:

- Quality:

Speak the truth, as far as you know it.

- Quantity:

Include as much detail as required, but not more. For example, Alice asks,
"Do you have any children?", and Bob replies, "I have two sons." Alice
assumes from this that Bob has two children, both boys, because if Bob had
daughters he would have mentioned them.

- Relation:

Be relevant. For example, Alice says, "Business has been slow today", and
Bob replies, "It's raining." Bob doesn't have to add "...and people often
don't go out when it's raining, so they won't get to visit this shop",
because Alice assumes that what Bob says is relevant to the conversation.

- Manner:

Speak in the way people expect. This covers quite a few things: for
example, we assume that people aren't being deliberately ambiguous.

The maxims become particularly interesting when you consider how they can
break down. For example, equivocation— that is, saying carefully-chosen
truths in order to deceive people— involves breaking the maxim of relation.
And sometimes people assume the maxims are

not

being followed— for example, people under hostile cross-examination often
have no reason to wish to cooperate, and so answer the question asked
rather than the question intended.

Love, drink, and debt, by Alexander Brome

I have been in love, and in debt, and in drink,

This many and many a year;

And those three are plagues enough, one would think,

For one poor mortal to bear.

'Twas drink made me fall in love,

And love made me run into debt,

And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,

I cannot get out of them yet.

There's nothing but money can cure me,

And rid me of all my pain;

'Twill pay all my debts, and remove all my lets,

And my mistress, that cannot endure me,

Will love me and love me again—

Then I'll fall to loving and drinking amain.

Love, drink, and debt are such evergreen concerns that this poem could have
been written in Victorian times, or in the twentieth century, or yesterday!
Only the rhyme of "love" with "strove" gives us the hint that it was
written in the seventeenth century.

Puppy dreams (T117)

My puppy always starts to growl as soon as he's asleep:

"I've caught a hundred waterfowl and killed a thousand sheep;

I felled and ate a buffalo, then swam across the sea,

And when I found where squirrels go, I chased them up the tree!"

And though his dreams are not the truth, who'll wake him up? Not I!

I've firmly held it since my youth that sleeping dogs should lie.

From a Railway Carriage, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And there is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

This is an old favourite. Like the best poetry, it evokes memories in
everyone, similar but each different; like the best poetry, the sound of it
is half the joy. Don't just sit there: read it aloud!

Harry Beck

Harry Beck

(1902-1974) worked for London Transport as an electrical engineer. His
great idea was born, as all great ideas are, by looking at something
familiar and seeing it anew in terms of something quite different.

One day in 1931,

he sketched the tube map

as if it were an

electrical circuit diagram

:
the map he drew

showed the order of stations

,
and the connections between them, but not their geographical positions,
nor the length of the lines between them, nor the physical routes they
took. Nowadays, we would call this a

topological map

,
but although topology had been well-studied by mathematicians back then,
this sort of practical use was new and nameless.

Unsurprisingly, Beck's bosses were sceptical. After all, it was an untested

skunkworks project

by someone without expertise in mapmaking. Nevertheless, he persuaded them
to give the design a try. It proved so popular that

it has been used in London ever since

,
as well as copied by countless other railway networks around the world.

In this way, Beck made daily life slightly easier for millions of commuters
over nearly a century. Most of them have never heard his name.

Mind. The gap.

Stations of the Cross (T74)

I watched from Farringdon as Satan fell;

I've battled for my soul at Leicester Square;

I've laid a ghost with Oystercard and bell;

I've tracked the wolf of Wembley to his lair;

I've drawn Heathrow's enchantment in rotation;

at Bank I played the devil for his fare;

I laugh at lesser modes of transportation.

I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

The Waterloo and City cast its spell;

I watched it slip away, and could not care,

the Northern Line descending into hell

until King's Cross was more than I could bear;

he left me there in fear for my salvation,

a Mansion House in heaven to prepare:

so why return to any lesser station?

I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

Three days beneath the earth in stench and smell

I lay, and let the enemy beware:

I learned the truth of tales the children tell:

an Angel plucked me homeward by the hair,

to glory from the depths of condemnation,

to where I started long ago from where

I missed my stop through long procrastination.

I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

Prince of the buskers, sing your new creation:

the change you ask is more than I can spare;

a change of spirit, soul, imagination.

I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

Cold Iron, by Rudyard Kipling

This is about as subtle as a cannonball, but Kipling knew his trade, and it
still holds the beauty and jingle of a nursery rhyme. As with all the poems
in

Puck of Pook's Hill

and

Rewards and Fairies

,
it's attached to a story about Dan and Una in the original book; this
story for this one is also called "Cold Iron", but unlike the poem, it
concerns the iron taboo.

"Gold is for the mistress — silver for the maid!

Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."

"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,

"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all!"

So he made rebellion 'gainst the King his liege,

Camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege.

"Nay!" said the cannoneer on the castle wall,

"But Iron — Cold Iron — shall be master of you all!"

Woe for the Baron and his knights so strong,

When the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along!

He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall,

And Iron — Cold Iron — was master of it all!

Yet his King spake kindly (ah, how kind a lord!)

"What if I release thee now, and give thee back thy sword?"

"Nay!" said the Baron, "mock not at my fall,

For Iron — Cold Iron — is master of men all."

"Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown —

Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.

As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,

For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!"

Yet his King made answer (few such kings there be!)

"Here is Bread and here is Wine — sit and sup with me.

Eat and drink in Mary's name, the whiles I do recall

How Iron — Cold Iron — can be master of men all!"

He took the Wine and blessed It; He blessed and brake the Bread

With His own Hands He served Them, and presently He said:

"Look! These Hands they pierced with nails outside My city wall

Show Iron — Cold Iron — to be master of men all!

"Wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong,

Balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong.

I forgive thy treason — I redeem thy fall —

For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!"

"Crowns are for the valiant — sceptres for the bold!

Thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold."

"Nay!" said the Baron, kneeling in his hall,

"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of man all!

Iron out of Calvary is master of men all!"

Heaven lies about us

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy"

— Wordsworth

Translation (T83)

One of the interesting things about being a writer is that you find people
talking about and using your work in ways you'd never considered. A few
years after I wrote the poem below, I happened upon the website for a
translation competition at a Russian university; the students had been set
some texts by German writers whose names I didn't recognise, and James
Thurber, and my poem. I love getting surprises like that.

Ah, would I were a German!

I'd trouble my translator

With nouns the size of Hamburg

And leave the verb till later.

And if I were a Welshman

My work would thwart translation

With ninety novel plurals

In strict alliteration.

And would I were Chinese!

I'd throw them off their course

With twelve unusual symbols

All homophones of “horse”.

But as it is, I'm English:

And

I'm

the one in hell

By writing in a language

Impossible to spell.

The echoes of an amber god (T54)

Electric sparkles in your touch,

the echoes of an amber god.

You fill my batteries with such

electric sparkles in your touch,

that Tesla would have charged too much

and Franklin dropped his lightning-rod:

electric sparkles in your touch,

the echoes of an amber god.

Clapham Junction; Jason Binder

I was going to draw you a cartoon as usual, but my tablet is still packed
away. Instead, here are some photos I took when I was working in London
earlier this year.

Trains in the sidings at

Clapham Junction

, the busiest railway station in Britain.
More than a hundred trains an hour come through.

The tombstone of Jason Binder:

"He respected all living things. His inspiration lives on."

And it lives on with me, too, even though his epitaph is all I know about
him.

The Rolling English Road, by G K Chesterton

Does this one really need an introduction? Well, if you've never seen it
before, then you have the joy of seeing it for the first time;

the

Guardian

has a decent analysis

if you're interested in digging into it. "Baggonets" is an archaic form of
the word "bayonets", and

Kensal Green

is a large London cemetery, one of the

magnificent seven

.
There is a pub called "

Paradise

" near there now; it was named for the poem.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;

But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

from St Peter's Complaint, by Robert Southwell

Robert Southwell

, SJ (1561-1595), who was one of the great poets of his generation, met

an early and unpleasant death

at the hands of Elizabeth I's inquisitors. (Don't confuse him with Robert
Southey, who lived 300 years later.)

Before we begin, note that "

quires

" here doesn't mean groups of singers, but books, especially

books made by folding large sheets of paper

.
And "imparadised", put into paradise, is a tremendous word which should
be more often used. (

Milton also uses it

, to describe sex in the Garden of Eden.)

Sweet volumes, stored with learning fit for saints,

Where blissful quires imparadise their minds;

Wherein eternal study never faints,

Still finding all, yet seeking all it finds:

How endless is your labyrinth of bliss,

Where to be lost the sweetest finding is!

This stanza is part of

a long poem about St Peter looking back over his life.

It's about the moment Peter, having just denied he ever knew Jesus, looks
across the courtyard to where Jesus is handcuffed, and catches his eye.
Southwell describes Jesus's eyes in that moment as though they were
libraries: a metaphor to take your breath away, even as you remember
similar experiences yourself. It's a comparison that shows not only
Southwell's devotion to God, and his skill as a poet, but also how great
his love of libraries was, that he would compare spending time in them to
catching the eye of Jesus.

Chimney

"He then stooped down and looked up the chimney"

Gladstone's Library

William Gladstone

(1809-1898) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom four times. He grew up
in Liverpool; no doubt his youth surrounded by poverty spurred him to fight
for voting not to be restricted by income, and no doubt his youth
surrounded by the Irish diaspora remained on his mind as he worked towards
Irish independence. He lived a careful life, closely examining and
recording all his actions, and since he recorded in his diary every book he
read, we know that he read on average a book a day for most of his life.

When he was an old man, he decided to found a library: the stock was
already to hand, since he had kept thousands of the books he had read. The
library was duly set up in a temporary building at Hawarden in Flintshire,
and (it is said) the 85-year-old Gladstone delivered most of the books
personally, trundling them from his house in a wheelbarrow.

After Gladstone's death, the library was rebuilt in

beautiful sham Gothic

stone.

It's still there, now with a quarter of a million volumes

,
and I encourage you to visit it if you can: it's one of the few libraries
where

you can board

for days or weeks as well as study. There are

regular events and workshops

,
but it's also especially popular with authors trying to finish
manuscripts: the chance to work uninterrupted in a peaceful atmosphere of
study can work wonders.

I always tried to write about the light (T32)

I always tried to write about the light

that inks these eyes in instant tint and hue,

that chances glances, sparkles through the night,

fresh as the morning, bloody as the dew;

the light that leaves your image in my mind,

that shining silver, shared for everyone,

that banishes the darkness from the blind,

the circle of the surface of the sun.

And when your light is shining far from mine,

when scores of stars are standing at their stations,

we'll weave our fingers round them as they shine,

and write each others' name on constellations;

and so we'll stand, and still, however far,

lock eyes and wish upon a single star.

In the Neolithic Age, by Rudyard Kipling

The last line of this poem, a plea for cultural diversity, is quoted fairly
often; I think the rest of the poem is worth reading too, and I'm afraid I
habitually quote the last two stanzas at people far too often.

"Certified by Traill" is a sarcastic reference: when Tennyson died in 1892,
there was some discussion as to who should be the new poet laureate, and a
man named H. D. Traill wrote an article listing fifty possible contenders.
He added Kipling's name as the fifty-first, as an afterthought.

In the Neolithic Age, savage warfare did I wage

For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.

I was singer to my clan in that dim red Dawn of Man,

And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring

Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;

And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg

Were about me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré—

'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell.

And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart

Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,

And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;

And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,

For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,

And he told me in a vision of the night: —

"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

And every single one of them is right!"

Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me

Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;

And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer,

And a minor poet certified by Traill!

Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow

When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;

When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,

And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,

Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;

Still we let our business slide— as we dropped the half-dressed hide—

To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large— seven seas from marge to marge—

And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;

And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,

And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose

And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:—

"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

And— every— single— one— of— them— is— right!"

Postscript from me:

And you know there came a day when they found another way,

but rejected it— for "seventy" won't scan.

Retweeted (T103)

Jill retweeted what I wrote,

forwarding to all her friends.

Time, you thief, who loves to gloat

over hopes and bitter ends,

say my loves and lines are bad,

say that life itself defeated me,

say I'm growing old, but add:

Jill retweeted me.

(After

"Jenny kissed me"

by James Leigh Hunt.)

Teletext Facebook

Those who weren't around in the 1980s in the UK may need to know that this
is a parodic representation of Facebook as if it had been around at the
time of

the BBC'S much-loved CEEFAX service

.
Gentle reader Dan Sheppard sent me a link to a recording of

CEEFAX On View

for those who never saw it, and those who'd like to refresh their memories.

Acquainted with the dawn (T118)

I have become acquainted with the dawn.

I have observed the evening as it fell.

I closed the careless curtain that had drawn

the charcoal-shaded cityscapes of hell.

I have indwelt a ditch a fathom deep.

I have withdrawn within a concrete shell.

I have grown late to rise and late to sleep.

I have cajoled the air on bended knee

and filled a lack of hunger lest I weep.

I have abandoned hope again, to see

my own cadaver naked and reborn.

Against the sky, the outline of a tree.

One drowsy-lidded daisy on the lawn.

I have become acquainted with the dawn.

(The form and subject were loosely inspired by

Robert Frost's poem

Acquainted with the Night

.

)

After Blenheim, by Robert Southey

Blenheim was

a battle

in the War of the Spanish Succession.

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,

And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun;

And by him sported on the green

His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,

Which he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found;

He came to ask what he had found

That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,

And with a natural sigh—

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,

"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about;

And often when I go to plough

The ploughshare turns them out.

For many thousand men," said he,

"Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"

Young Peterkin he cries;

And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes;

"Now tell us all about the war,

And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,

"Who put the French to rout;

But what they fought each other for,

I could not well make out.

But everybody said," quoth he,

"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,

Yon little stream hard by;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,

And he was forced to fly:

So with his wife and child he fled,

Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword the country round

Was wasted far and wide,

And many a childing mother then

And newborn baby died:

But things like that, you know, must be

At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight

After the field was won,

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be

After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,

And our good Prince Eugene."

"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"

Said little Wilhelmine.

"Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,

"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the Duke

Who this great fight did win."

"But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,

"But 'twas a famous victory."

The bottom of the sea

"'Tis the bottom of the sea!"

Caught the sun

I was out fishing all day,

and I seem to have caught the sun

The Nine Worthies

Suppose I asked you to name the world's great heroes? (For example, as you
may recall,

some talk of Alexander

.)
Well, in the Middle Ages, a fair amount of thought went into the list.
Who was an example of virtue and valour; whose chivalry was worth
emulating?

One such list is known in English as the

Nine Worthies

.
It was drawn up in the early 1300s, and remained a popular theme in art
for centuries after. Here they are in 1460, looking for all the world like
a medieval pack of

Top Trumps

:

Even though some of these men had lived (or were supposed to have lived)
millennia earlier, they are all drawn wearing armour of the time, and
bearing their own coat of arms, as if they lived in that very moment. This
is because they are deliberately idealised— after all, as a careful perusal
of the Old Testament will show,
not all of them
were in fact models of chivalry. Take King David, for example...

The Worthies are divided into three groups of three: three Jewish heroes, three
Christian heroes, and three pagan heroes— that is, pagan in the old sense
of not following an Abrahamic religion.

The Jewish heroes are:

- Joshua the son of Nun

, who led the invasion of Canaan;

- David the son of Jesse

, who became king and wrote psalms; and

- Judas Maccabeus

, who led the revolt against the Syrians now commemorated by Hanukkah. (Don't confuse Judas Maccabeus with Judas Iscariot.)

The pagan heroes are:

- Hector of Troy

, a great warrior of the Trojan War;

- Julius Caesar

, the first emperor of Rome; and

- Alexander the Great.

The Christian heroes are:

- Arthur

, the hero of the Matter of Britain;

- Charles the Great

, also called Charlemagne, the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and

- Godfrey of Bouillon

, who became the first crusader king of Jerusalem (but disclaimed the title).

I am particularly interested by the heraldry. How did they make up new and
unique coats of arms for people who had been dead for three thousand years?
David has a harp because he composed psalms (and not because he was king of
Ireland). Julius has an eagle rather like the one on the Roman standard;
Charles has the same, appropriately for someone who was also trying to
become Emperor of Rome, but combined with the lily pattern known as "France
Ancient". Others of them are baffling to me: what is Joshua bearing, for
example? I did find a reference to

the arms they made up for Alexander

in a book, but frustratingly I ran out of time to research this.

I am glad to report that there were also nine female Worthies to balance
out the nine men. Unfortunately none of the writers seem to agree about
which nine women they were.

Storytelling, part II (T80)

When Merlin looked upon this land,

he knew by magic arts

the anger in the acts of men,

the hatred in their hearts:

he saw despair and deadly things,

and knew our hope must be

the magic when the kettle sings

to make a pot of tea.

When Galahad applied to sit

in splendour at the Table,

he swore an oath to fight for good

as far as he was able.

But Arthur put the kettle on,

and bade him sit and see

the goodness that is brought anon

by making pots of tea.

When Arthur someday shall return

in glory, with his knights,

he'll rout our foes and bless the poor

and put the land to rights.

And shall we drink his health in ale?

Not so! It seems to me

he'll meet us in the final tale

and share a pot of tea.

The great Panjandrum, by Samuel Foote

When a certain Charles Macklin claimed he could repeat any sentence he
heard, no matter how complex, Samuel Foote allegedly composed this sentence
impromptu:

So she went into the garden

to cut a cabbage-leaf

to make an apple-pie;

and at the same time

a great she-bear, coming down the street,

pops its head into the shop.

What! no soap?

So he died,

and she very imprudently married the Barber:

and there were present

the Picninnies,

and the Joblillies,

and the Garyulies,

and the great Panjandrum himself,

with the little round button at top;

and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can,

till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots

Berwick-upon-Tweed

In the poem above, I mentioned

Berwick-upon-Tweed

,
or Berwick for short (it rhymes with Derek). Berwick is the most
northerly town in England, two miles from the Scottish border. It stands at
the mouth of the river Tweed, which divides Scotland from England in those
parts, but Berwick is on the Scottish bank: for quite a bit of its history
it was a very southerly town in Scotland instead.

The town's football team

still plays in the Scottish leagues instead of the English. Berwick has
been

in English hands since 1482

,
though given

next month's referendum

I'm not going to guess how long that will last.

As befits such a frontier town, it's impressively fortified, and

the castle and ramparts

are well worth seeing. But today I particularly wanted to tell you about
the story of its war with Russia.

Fans of Jasper Fforde's

Thursday Next

series, and anyone who had to learn

The Charge of the Light Brigade

at school, will remember

the Crimean War

, a conflict which remained an infamous example of pointless waste of life
until at least 1914. Now, because Berwick had changed hands between England
and Scotland several times, it was once the rule that legal documents would
mention both countries as "England, Scotland, and Berwick-upon-Tweed" to be
on the safe side. And the story goes that when Britain declared war on
Russia in 1853, it was in the name of England, Scotland, and
Berwick-upon-Tweed, but

the peace treaty

in 1856 forgot to include Berwick, so this small town remained technically
at war with Russia for over a century.

In fact, the tale is untrue: Berwick wasn't mentioned in the declaration of
war, as far as I know, though I admit I haven't been able to trace a copy—
can any of you do any better?

Such is the power of story that in 1966,
with the Cold War becoming ever more tense, the town council decided that
something had to be done about the problem. So the London correspondent of
Pravda, one Oleg Orestov, travelled the 350 miles up to Berwick

for peace talks

, so that everyone could be sure that Berwick was not at war with the USSR.
The mayor told Mr Orestov, "Please tell the Russian people through your
newspaper that they can sleep peacefully in their beds."

from Haunted Houses, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

On first looking into an A to Z (T13)

My talent (or my curse) is getting lost:

my routes are recondite and esoteric.

Perverted turns on every road I crossed

have dogged my feet from Dover up to Berwick.

My move to London only served to show

what fearful feast of foolishness was mine:

I lost my way from Tower Hill to Bow,

and rode the wrong way round the Circle Line.

In nameless London lanes I wandered then

whose tales belied my tattered A to Z,

and even now, in memory again

I plod despairing, Barking in my head,

still losing track of who and where I am,

silent, upon a street in Dagenham.

(Notes: the title is a reference to Keats's sonnet

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

. "A to Z" is a standard book of London streetmaps.)

On-sweet bathroom

On-sweet bathroom

Happy birthday, Eve

Adam:

"Happy birthday, Eve!"

Eve:

"It's today, not tomorrow."

Mitochondria

Mitochondria are tiny living things, rather like bacteria. They live inside the cells of almost all animals, plants, and fungi, where their job is to process glucose in order to provide a source of power for the rest of the cell. Without their help, we wouldn't be here.

Two cheerful little mitochondria from a lung cell. Each is about 0.00025 millimetres across.

Photo by Louisa Howard, public domain.

What fascinates me particularly about mitochondria is that they have their own DNA, which is not at all like human DNA and much more like the DNA of bacteria. Part of our bodies is essentially a different creature. And because you inherit all your mitochondria only from your mother, mitochondrial DNA is very useful in tracing your ancestry.

So how did we come to have these creatures living inside our cells? The most commonly-accepted explanation is that two billion years ago, when complex cells were just starting out, the mitochondria discovered that the cells were a good place to live inside, with lots of glucose to feed on. It was just as useful for the cell, which needed the glucose processed. Symbiosis! The mitochondria hitched a lift, and they've been with us ever since. So even when you think you're alone, remember you're also a sort of walking mitochondrial city.

Transplanted (T120)

Let an apple tree be planted

close beside a ditch of mud,

let its roots be parched and aching,

ever waiting for the flood;

so its small and bitter apples

overhang the streambed dry,

cursed to live and never flourish,

painful grow, and painful die.

Yet, this tree shall be transplanted

to a meadow by a stream;

clouds shall shower down their mercies,

sunlight throw its kindest beam;

roots recall the feel of fullness,

by the river, in the rain,

branches shall be pruned and ready,

hope and apples grow again.

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

Sometimes, when I read about people from the past, I wonder what it was like to have a conversation with them. Can you imagine going out to get fish and chips with Carl Linnaeus, for example? You'd be chatting about something, and all of a sudden you'd hear him gasp "Oh, Veronica," so you'd look round and he'd be on his hands and knees saying, "My goodness, a hitherto undiscovered variety of speedwell!" And of course it's rather easier to imagine what Johnson was like to meet socially, since that's how so many of his biographers observed him.

Another such person is a Baptist minister named

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

(1810-1897), the owner of an inquisitive mind, a formidable beard, and one of the strongest things in the world: a good habit. As he read, and he read a great deal, he would write down every question that crossed his mind. When he found the answer, he would write it on the same piece of paper, then file it. You may imagine that paper files formed a large part of his life, and also a large part of his house.

In his mid-twenties, he collected many of these questions together into a popular science manual entitled

A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar

. This sold so well that it enabled him to leave Norwich and travel around Europe, investigating and learning. Because the book also brought him into the public eye, he began to receive a great deal of correspondence about questions the book had raised, which nourished his files still further.

He returned to England at the age of forty-six, to begin his greatest work:

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

. Many of the questions he had considered were about mysterious allusions in his reading; what did this phrase mean? or what story was referred to there? He determined to answer as many as possible, in alphabetical order. The job took fourteen years. Even though he was sixty by the time the book was published, he went on to produce a revised edition in 1891 at the age of seventy-four.

It's still in print, and I urge you to get yourself a copy if you can-- it's easily found second-hand. Discovering Brewer enriched my childhood; I would wander through his pages and learn things fascinating enough that it didn't matter how useless the knowledge might be. It often came in useful, though, years later. And Brewer's own touch is on every line: you really can imagine that it would have been much the same to have a chat with him, darting from subject to subject with the dazzling randomness of a dragonfly.

Funeral (T87)

I don't intend to die, for I have much to finish first.

But if you plan my funeral, if worst should come to worst,

I want some decent hymns, some

"Love Divine"

s, and

"Guide me, O"

s.

Say masses for my soul (for I shall need them, heaven knows),

And ring a muffled quarter-peal, and preach a sermon next

(

“Behold, that dreamer cometh”

should be given as the text),

Then draw a splendid hatchment up, proclaiming my decease.

And cast me where the lamp-post towers over Parker's Piece

That I may lie for evermore and watch the Cambridge skies...

I'll see you in the Eagle then, and stand you beer and pies.

In bed with Gregor

"...and not only did he run off in the middle of the night,
he even left a creepy-crawly in the bed for me to find in the morning.
I tell you, that's the last time I go home with Gregor Samsa."

On Monsieur's departure, by Elizabeth Tudor

"Monsieur" here is

Francis, Duke of Anjou

(1555-1584), who had been courting Elizabeth I. They were both interested, but politics is rarely an easy game, and in the end he gave up and went back to France.

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.

I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

His too familiar care doth make me rue it.

No means I find to rid him from my breast,

Till by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die, and so forget what love ere meant.

As someone who knew her once said, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Inheritance powder

In 1800, there lived in Berlin a young woman named

Sophie Ursinus

.

She was married to a senior politician, who was much older, and (possibly at his suggestion) she had a boyfriend, who was an officer in the Dutch army. Between 1800 and 1801, both her husband and her boyfriend died suddenly; so did her elderly aunt, leaving her a good deal of money. No questions were asked. But in 1803, shortly after Mrs Ursinus argued with her servant, he became ill, and became suspicious; he took the plums she had given him to a friendly chemist, who confirmed that they appeared to have been laced with arsenic. The law was called in.

But there was then no reliable test for

arsenic

, and the pathologists could not confirm beyond a reasonable doubt that the exhumed body of her husband contained the poison, any more than it could have been detected at his post-mortem. Fortunately they were more sure when they examined the body of her aunt, and so Mrs Ursinus was sent to prison for thirty years.

Arsenic was nearly the perfect poison: readily obtainable if you claim you're trying to kill rats, easily administered by mixing into your victim's drink, causing symptoms plausibly similar to those of various then-common illnesses such as cholera, and-- should you be found out in the end-- almost undetectable in the body by any reliable test. So many people used it to remove rich and elderly relatives who had survived inconveniently long that it became euphemistically known as "inheritance powder".

In 1832 a man named

John Bodle

was accused of murdering his grandfather by putting arsenic in his coffee, and the prosecution called a chemist named James Marsh as an expert witness. Marsh discovered arsenic in the body, using the test developed by the homeopath (!) Samuel Hahnemann, which was the best available method at the time. But a positive result with Hahnemann's test deteriorates so fast that by the time of the trial the jury were not convinced, and Bodle was acquitted; he confessed his guilt as soon as he was protected by double jeopardy. Marsh was stung, and set out to discover a reliable test for arsenic.

He found one, and published it in 1838: it has become known as the

Marsh test

. It builds upon the previous work of Carl Scheele, who had shown in 1775 that

arsine gas

(AsH₃) would result from treating arsenic with zinc and nitric acid. Marsh's breakthrough was to set fire to the arsine gas in the presence of charcoal, producing arsenic and water vapour, and staining the vessel with a silvery-black colour that came to be known as "arsenic mirror". (I apologise to my chemist readers if I have misunderstood any of this, and invite corrections.) Marsh's idea had its first successful outing in 1840, in the trial of a French poisoner named

Marie Lafarge

; so widely was this success reported in the news that poisoning one's relatives with arsenic became passé almost overnight.

Marsh and his test

One interesting footnote: modern detective fiction began in 1841, with Edgar Allen Poe's story

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

. I doubt there's any direct connection, but the timing amuses me: detective fiction would be far less interesting with the easy availability of undetectable poisons!

Lucifer in Starlight, by George Meridith

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend

above the rolling ball, in cloud part screened,

where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.

Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.

And now upon his western wing he leaned,

now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,

now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.

Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars

with memory of the old revolt from awe,

he reached a middle height, and at the stars,

which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank.

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,

the army of unalterable law.

Requiem for an oak (T30)

I thought I saw an execution there.

The fascinated public gathered round.

The cheerful hangmen stripped the victim bare

And built their gibbet high above the ground.

The rope was taut, my wildness filled with fear.

I saw him fall. I heard his final cry.

Yet when the hangmen left I ventured near

To find my fault: I'd never seen him die.

In fact, I think he'd died some years ago.

There's blackness of decay in every breath.

The sound of flies was all that's left to grow,

Now free to come and feast upon his death;

Prince of the trees, I have a simple plea:

I will not die till death has come to me.

Et in arcadia Lego

Nicolas Poussin's painting of shepherds reading

"Et in Arcadia ego"

inscribed on a tomb.

"Et in Arcadia Lego."

Mary (T12)

Her soul proclaimed the greatness of the Lord

who dwelt within her belly, and her mind.

The light shines on, the humble are restored,

and food and mercy given to mankind.

That day she saw the everlasting light

she memorised, and treasured up inside,

investing for the fading of her sight

the hope that living light had never died;

till hope itself within her arms lay dying,

a frozen journey, ready to embark,

and nothing more is left for her but trying

to comprehend the greatness of the dark;

yet somewhere shines the light, in spite of that,

and silently she sighed magnificat.

The Yak, by Hilaire Belloc

As a friend to the children, commend me the Yak.

You will find it exactly the thing:

It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,

Or lead it about with a string.

The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Tibet

(A desolate region of snow)

Has for centuries made it a nursery pet.

And surely the Tartar should know!

Then tell your papa where the Yak can be got,

And if he is awfully rich

He will buy you the creature-- or else he will

not

.

(I cannot be positive which.)

Mustard gas and chemotherapy

We begin with something not in the least wonderful.

Mustard gas

is a substance used in chemical warfare; its effects begin to show around six hours after contact, causing painfully blistering chemical burns, conjunctivitis, and potentially fatal damage to the lungs. It works by interfering with the DNA so that cells can no longer reproduce themselves. To put it mildly, mustard gas is seriously unpleasant stuff.

The Allies never used mustard gas in the Second World War, but both the UK and the US were secretly manufacturing it just in case. In 1944, the Americans sent sixty tons of the stuff to their troops in Italy aboard a Liberty (merchant navy) ship named the

SS

John Harvey

, reaching the British-controlled Italian port of

Bari

in late November of that year. But there was rather a queue, and the John Harvey lay waiting in the harbour for a week: the captain was prevented from telling the harbourmaster that his cargo was dangerous and should have priority in unloading because of official secrecy.

On 2 December

the Luftwaffe bombed Bari harbour

, sinking seventeen ships including the

John Harvey

, and releasing a cloud of mustard gas to drift across the town. Nobody knows for sure how many thousands of people were injured or killed, again because of official secrecy: the whole accident was hushed up and didn't become public knowledge until the late 1960s. Nor did the doctors treating the injured people know that mustard gas was involved. At this point, the Americans despatched a chemical weapons expert named Dr Stewart Alexander to work out what was going on. His quick thinking identified the mustard gas and saved many lives; nevertheless, he still had to go through many autopsies.

But it was at these autopsies that Dr Alexander noticed something odd: people who died from mustard gas exposure had very few white blood cells, because the effects of the gas had prevented the cells dividing. If it stopped white blood cells from multiplying, might it stop cancerous cells from multiplying as well? Dr Alexander's work led eventually to the discovery of

mechlorethamine

, a derivative of mustard gas that became the first chemotherapy drug, and thus saved the lives of millions.

Ode to Joy (T156)

This is the poem I read at my grandmother's funeral.

Our Joy has left us. Should we say goodbye?

Not while we smile recalling what she said;

not while the sharp remembrance of her eye

surprises us through all the days ahead;

not while the greenest branches of her tree

still show her love for living and for learning;

not while each grandchild welcomed on her knee

holds hope the world should never tire of turning;

not while our Joy lives on. The Prince of Peace

who holds her safe until we meet again

will call us too, where separations cease,

and builds a bridge between the now and then,

a bridge that even death could not destroy.

So lives our love, our hope, for peace for Joy.

Formal hall

I wanted to show you a happy photo, so here's one of my grandparents when they came up to Cambridge for formal hall at my college. I think it's from 1998.

A St Helena lullaby, by Rudyard Kipling

This is Kipling's biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. "Gay go up, gay go down" in the third stanza is a rhyme that was used at the time by children on seesaws. Can anyone explain the odd stress pattern on "Trafalgar" in the fifth stanza?

"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play?"

What makes you want to wander there with all the world between?

Oh, Mother, call your son again, or else he'll run away.

(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)

"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"

I haven't time to answer now– the men are falling fast.

The guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat.

(If you take the first step, you will take the last!)

"How far is St. Helena from the field of Austerlitz?"

You couldn't hear me if I told– so loud the cannons roar.

But not so far for people who are living by their wits.

("Gay go up" means "Gay go down" the wide world o'er!)

"How far is St. Helena from the Emperor of France?"

I cannot see– I cannot tell– the crowns they dazzle so.

The Kings sit down to dinner, and the Queens stand up to dance.

(After open weather, you may look for snow!)

"How far is St. Helena from the Capes of Trafalgar?"

A longish way– a longish way– with ten year more to run.

It's South across the water underneath a setting star.

(What you cannot finish, you must leave undone!)

"How fair is St. Helena from the Beresina ice?"

An ill way– a chill way– the ice begins to crack.

But not so far for gentlemen who never took advice.

(When you can't go forward, you must e'en come back!)

"How far is St. Helena from the field of Waterloo?"

A near way– a clear way– the ship will take you soon.

A pleasant place for gentlemen with little left to do.

(Morning never tries you till the afternoon!)

"How far from St. Helena to the Gate of Heaven's Grace?"

That no one knows– that no one knows– and no one ever will.

But fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face,

And after all your trapesings, child, lie still!

Ballade of Suicide, by G K Chesterton

Chesterton wrote quite a few poems about depression. I like this one particularly because it starts humorously-- literally using gallows humour-- but once it's drawn you in, it ends on a serious point about hope. Ballades are a difficult form, but Chesterton makes it look easy, though in fact he's made it even harder for himself by his choice of rhymes. It's conventional to address a prince at the end of a ballade, who is often assumed to be the Prince of Darkness (i.e. Satan): thus the end of the poem is about the downfall of evil, and perhaps the Second Coming.

The gallows in my garden, people say,

Is new and neat and adequately tall.

I tie the noose on in a knowing way

As one that knots his necktie for a ball;

But just as all the neighbours— on the wall—

Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"

The strangest whim has seized me... After all

I think I will not hang myself today.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay—

My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall—

I see a little cloud all pink and gray—

Perhaps the rector's mother will

not

call—

I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall

That mushrooms could be cooked another way—

I never read the works of Juvenal—

I think I will not hang myself today.

The world will have another washing day;

The decadents decay; the pedants pall;

And H. G. Wells has found that children play,

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall;

Rationalists are growing rational—

And through thick woods one finds a stream astray,

So secret that the very sky seems small—

I think I will not hang myself today.

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,

The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;

Even today your royal head may fall—

I think I will not hang myself today.

Emotional rollercoaster

"I worry they'll all fall out of their seats. Then I get so sad when they all go home. Then after they've gone, I get so lonely..."

For night can only hide (T31)

When once I stop and take account of these

that God has granted me upon the earth,

the loves, the friends, the work, that charm and please

these things I count inestimable worth;

when once I stop, I learn that I am rich

beyond the dreams of emperors and kings

and light is real, and real these riches which

exceed the worth of all material things...

when thus I stop, I cannot understand

when few and feeble sunbeams cannot find

their way into that drab and dreary land,

the darkness of the middle of my mind.

yet darkness cannot take away my joy,

for night can only hide, and not destroy.

No, by Thomas Hood

Because it's that time of year, and because I remember that Gentle Reader Toby likes it:

No sun — no moon!

No morn — no noon —

No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day —

No sky — no earthly view —

No distance looking blue —

No road — no street — no "t'other side the way" —

No end to any Row —

No indications where the Crescents go —

No top to any steeple —

No recognitions of familiar people —

No courtesies for showing 'em —

No knowing 'em!

No travelling at all — no locomotion —

No inkling of the way — no notion —

"No go" — by land or ocean —

No mail — no post —

No news from any foreign coast —

No Park — no Ring — no afternoon gentility —

No company — no nobility —

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member —

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November!

Solstice (T116)

Perhaps I might compare... oh damn it. No.

It's four, and it's already almost night.

The land lies suffocated under snow:

they say "the dead of winter", and they're right.

My life's on hold until the first of May:

until that morning comes I have to cope

with dragging on through every darkened day.

July will come: I have to live in hope.

No. You're the one I'm missing, not July.

Yours is the warmth, not April's, that I miss.

I miss your smiles far more than May, and I

lie longing, not for June, but for your kiss;

I'm cold and tired. I don't know what to do.

Shall I compare a summer's day to you?

A tree song, by Rudyard Kipling

This is a good song for the winter solstice. "Ellum" is an obsolete dialectal form of "elm"; its habit of dropping branches on people is noted also in White's

The Sword in the Stone

, where the tree adds, "The cream of the joke is that they make the coffins out of me afterwards." Unfortunately for the landscape, but perhaps fortunately for our skulls,

the elm has become nearly extinct

in England since Kipling's time.

Of all the trees that grow so fair

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day

Or ever Aeneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home

When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

(From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

And Beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad

Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But— we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth—

Good news for cattle and corn—

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn):

England shall bide till Judgement Tide,

By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Epictetus

In Asia Minor, sometime around the year 55 of our era, a baby was born; he was soon afterwards sold into slavery, taken to Rome, and given the name

Epictetus

(Ἐπίκτητος). He couldn't walk, so his master sent him to learn to read and write instead; he thrived in academia and ended up as one of the foremost philosophers of his age. Eventually his master freed him, and Epictetus set up his own philosophy school.

Epictetus was a Stoic: that is, he believed the important thing in life is to learn to act and react appropriately. You can't expect to be fully in control of your possessions or your body, and you certainly can't expect to control other people, but you can learn to be more in control of your own mind and your own reactions. For example, suppose you're a tennis player; however hard you train, you might never win at Wimbledon, because of things you can't control: luck, the weather, the performances of other players. But being the best tennis player you can be

is

within your control, so it's a more appropriate goal to aim for. If you do manage to learn to react to everything that happens in the most appropriate manner for that thing, Epictetus says you will have achieved happiness (εὐδαιμονία,

eudaemonia

, "good-spiritedness").

We don't have any of Epictetus's own writings. But Arrian, one of his pupils, wrote up his lecture notes in eight books called

the "Discourses"

, four of which have come down to us; he also produced a short summary often called

the "Enchiridion"

, which simply means "handbook". That's a good place to start reading. There are several good translations; the one at the link was written by

the rather wonderful Elizabeth Carter

(1717-1806).

Many people have learned from Epictetus's ideas in the last two thousand years, but perhaps one of the most surprising is the second-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself no mean philosopher; though they never met, the emperor cited Epictetus's influence repeatedly in his writings. In around a hundred years, Epictetus had gone from slavery to being the teacher of the emperor of Rome.

My notes

I thought you might like to see what my notes for an issue of Gentle Readers look like, so here's today's:

Myrrh

Two wise men and a cow visit Mary.

First wise man:

I bring gold!

Second wise man:

I bring frankincense!

Cow:

MYRRRH

Shooting for the moon

A group called

Africa2Moon

announced today that it's organising

an Africa-wide effort to go to the moon

. Many people have objected that Africa has many problems which need work and money, and that a moon shot will only distract from more urgent priorities.

The organisation's answer was rather interesting

: in a way, the moon landing itself is a sort of

McGuffin

. The real story is about getting there: as a side effect of training up the scientists and the engineers, and building the systems needed, it should reduce the brain drain to the west, and improve life across the continent as a side-effect-- not unlike the effects of the US space programme a generation earlier.

And this set me thinking about parallels: we all live in communities that need investments of time and effort and money, from food banks to counsellors. When and how is it possible to create something within these communities, something that everyone can collaborate on and be inspired by?

Song of New Year's Eve (T3)

Here's a poem about ringing in the new year. It's the earliest sonnet of mine I think is any good: I wrote it when I was about 18.

Look to your Lord who gives you life.

This year must end as all the years.

You live here in the vale of tears.

This year brought toil, the next year strife.

For too, too soon we break our stay.

The end of things may be a birth.

The clouds will fade and take the earth.

Make fast your joy on New Year's Day.

When dies a friend we weep and mourn.

When babes are born we drink with cheer.

But no man mourns when dies the year.

When dies the age, may you be born.

Your death, your birth, are close at hand.

In him we trust. In him we stand.

The cloths of heaven, by W B Yeats

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light;

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Here deep in the city (T77)

Here deep in the city it is always night.

As I walk each street it is always night.

The men in their mansions drink their delight.

For those in the streets it is always night.

Those in the doorways step out to fight.

They slip to where it is always night.

Each plays a game to increase his might.

Each keeps his brother where it is always night.

We laugh, and lie about the lands of light.

I still light candles where it is always night.

Mondegreens

When I was about six years old, I decided to make a poetry anthology in an old school exercise book. For the next two or three years, whenever I found a poem I liked, I added it to the book. There are even a few compositions of my own in there.

One of the poems is the lyrics of

Lily the Pink

, a song about the redoubtable

Lydia Pinkham

that we'd learned at school. In reality, the chorus of this song begins:

We'll drink-a-drink-a-drink

To Lily the Pink, the Pink, the Pink,

The saviour of

The human race

But at infant school they didn't give you a sheet with the words, because they assumed you couldn't read, so I had to work out the lyrics from listening to the other children and the teacher. Unsurprisingly, then, the version of the song in my anthology goes:

Drink a drink a drink

Lily the Pink a pink a pink

To save your eye

The human ray hay hace.

Errors like this are known as mondegreens, after

a 1957 article by Sylvia Wright

in

Harper's

. Ms Wright notes that when she first heard the ballad

The Bonnie Earl o'Murray

(Childs 181), whose first verse runs

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where have you been?

They have slain the Earl o' Murray

And laid him on the green.

she misheard the last two lines as:

They have slain the Earl of Murray,

And

Lady Mondegreen

.

Mondegreens are a sort of copyist's error in the passing on of culture, and they

crop up everywhere

.

- Excuse me while I kiss the sky

becomes

Excuse me while I kiss this guy

.

- The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

becomes

the girl with colitis goes by

.

- I am the lord of the dance, said he

becomes

I am the lord of the

damp settee

.

There are

dozens involving Christmas carols

. Have a look for collections around the web and send me your favourites, or some of your own.

from Similar Cases, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This is the start of the poem;

it goes on

to give similar cases of apes who want to be humans, and cavemen who want to start civilisation. But I think the point is well made with the excerpt below.

There was once a little animal,

No bigger than a fox,

And on five toes he scampered

Over Tertiary rocks.

They called him Eohippus,

And they called him very small,

And they thought him of no value,

When they thought of him at all;

For the lumpish old Dinoceras

And Coryphodon so slow

Were the heavy aristocracy

In days of long ago.

Said the little Eohippus,

“I am going to be a horse,

And on my middle finger-nails

To run my earthly course.

I’m going to have a flowing tail;

I’m going to have a mane;

I’m going to stand fourteen hands high

On the psychozoic plain!”

The Coryphodon was horrified,

The Dinoceras was shocked,

And they chased young Eohippus,

But he skipped away and mocked.

Then they laughed enormous laughter,

And they groaned enormous groans,

And they bade young Eohippus

Go view his father’s bones.

Said they: “You always were as small

And mean as now we see,

And that’s conclusive evidence

That you’re always going to be.”

“What! be a great, tall, handsome beast,

With hoofs to gallop on?

Why! you’d have to change your nature!”

Said the Loxolophodon.

They considered him disposed of,

And retired with gait serene;

That was the way they argued

In the early Eocene.

The stars and stripes for heifer

The stars and stripes for heifer

The blind men and the elephant, by John Godfrey Saxe

This is a famous retelling of

a very old story

.

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The

First

approached the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

"God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a wall!"

The

Second

, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, "Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me 'tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a spear!"

The

Third

approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a snake!"

The

Fourth

reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee.

"What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain," quoth he;

"'Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!"

The

Fifth

, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!"

The

Sixth

no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Than, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

At this point I should include my parody; I wondered what might happen if blind elephants had tried to find out about humans.

It was six jolly

Elephants

(And all of them were blind),

That all agreed to search a town

To study humankind,

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The first one felt a human's head;

In puzzled tones he spake:

"This wonder of a

Human Man

Is flat as griddle-cake!"

The others solemnly agreed,

"'Tis true, and no mistake."

Metro gnome

Metro gnome

Proof by elephants

The voyage of Columbus didn't convince anyone that the world is round. Nobody needed convincing, because

nobody believed that the world was flat

. Nearly two thousand years earlier, a Greek scholar named

Eratosthenes had demonstrated it

-- not only the shape of the earth, but even how far it was around. (He went to two different cities, and measured the angle of the sun when it was at its highest point on Midsummer Day. Then, since he knew how far apart the cities were, he could work out the circumference of the earth.)

But a century before Erastothenes, Aristotle's book

On the heavens

(

Περὶ οὐρανοῦ

) gave

five reasons

to believe the earth is round. And one of them is a proof by elephants.

- What do you find if you go as far west from Greece as you can, to Africa? Elephants!

- What do you find if you go as far east as you can, to India? Elephants!

So obviously if the east and the west both have elephants, it stands to reason that they're next to one another.

"Hence one should not be too sure of the incredibility of the view of those who conceive that there is continuity between the parts about the pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one. As further evidence in favour of this they quote the case of elephants, a species occurring in each of these extreme regions, suggesting that the common characteristic of these extremes is explained by their continuity."

Thomas Aquinas

helpfully pointed out the flaw

in this reasoning:

...they make a conjecture as to the similarity of both places from the elephants which arise in both places but are not found in the regions between them. This of course is a sign of the agreement of these places but not necessarily of their nearness to one another.

Indigo

The end of the rainbow-- it was in Salford all along

I'm pretty sure you were taught the order of the colours of the rainbow-- maybe with "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain", or perhaps with someone named "Roy G. Biv". Either way, the standard colour sequence is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The obvious question is: what on earth is indigo?

The sequence we all learned is taken from a book called

Opticks

, written by Isaac Newton in 1704. In this book he sets out his discoveries about the way light breaks up as it passes through a prism. Newton was a rather superstitious person, and he believed that the number seven is really important, so it seemed good to have seven colours. Here's the diagram he drew.

The colour Newton calls "blue" comes immediately after green. So it's a greenish blue-- what we might now call cyan, or turquoise. Indigo, then, must be blue-- and in fact it's the name of a dye with a deep and brilliant blue colour.

Blue has always been a difficult colour to produce.

The Ancient Egyptians knew the art of making things blue

, but with the fall of the Roman Empire their technology was lost. In the Middle Ages blue was so rare that it was worn only by the very rich. One of a very few places you could get blue dye was from the indigo plant,

Indigofera tinctoria

, a kind of bean. You take the plant's leaves, soak them in water, and wait for them to ferment. Then you drain off the water and mix the residue with a strong alkali, such as lye. Heaven knows how they discovered this.

The indigo plant comes from India, as you may have guessed from the name. By the eighteenth century it was also grown in other hot parts of the world, such as Mexico and the southern United States. Predictably those who farmed the plants and extracted the dye were soon slaves; there was

a major non-violent revolt

in Bengal in March 1859, which was severely suppressed.

Must indigo be grown? Can it be produced in a lab instead? Yes, it can: Adolf von Baeyer discovered how, which won him

the 1905 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

. These days almost all indigo dye produced is artificial, and most of it goes on dyeing denim jeans.

The indigo plant can only grow in hot climates. But there's another plant with similar properties, which grows even in Britain: a kind of cabbage called

woad

(

Isatis tinctoria

). There is a story that the Picts used to dye their bodies with woad, and strip naked to scare invaders. It's

probably untrue

, and based on a misreading of Caesar's

Commentarii de Bello Gallico

. Which is a shame, because there aren't many things more likely to make you run away than naked blue people smelling of rotten leaves.

Shattered (T5)

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said...

I couldn't comprehend his speech;

he spoke a tongue I didn't understand.

It might have meant “a statue's on a beach”...

at least, he let me see vacation snaps

and there was quite a lot of sand about

and one old statue, African perhaps,

or Indian, I'm in a bit of doubt.)

So anyway, I saw the statue's face:

its nose was crinkled, like a lord who sniffs.

And then there was some writing on the base;

I couldn't read it. It was hieroglyphs.

It all seems kind of strange, and far away,

but must have had

some

meaning in its day.

Thou'rt a scholar

Mar.

Thou'rt a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

Hor.

Well,

who knew

... I mean,

what

are the chances you'd ask me that just after my college's "Speaking To Ghosts 101" course was oversubscribed? I mean I tried to get a place on it, but it's, like, the

most popular

course in the whole university, isn't it? Duh.

Woad Song, by William Hope-Jones

(to the tune of "Men of Harlech")

What's the good of wearing braces,

Vests, and pants, and boots with laces?

Spats, or hats you buy in places

Down the Brompton Road?

What's the use of shirts of cotton,

Studs that always get forgotten?

Such affairs are simply rotten:

Better far is woad.

Woad's the stuff to show men.

Woad to scare your foemen:

Boil it to a brilliant hue

And rub it on your back and your ab-do-men.

Ancient Briton never hit on

Anything as good as woad to fit on

Neck, or knees, or where you sit on!

Tailors, you be blowed.

Romans came across the Channel

All wrapped up in tin and flannel:

Half a pint of woad per man'll

Dress us more than these.

Saxons, you can waste your stitches

Building beds for bugs in breeches:

We have woad to clothe us, which is

Not a nest for fleas.

Romans, keep your armours!

Saxons, your pyjamas!

Hairy coats were meant for goats,

Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs, and llamas.

Tramp up Snowdon with your woad on,

Never mind if you get rained or snowed on.

Never want a button sewed on.

Go, the Ancient B's.