Margarine—the prefix “oleo-”
Latterly has been effaced,
Though no doubt in many a folio
Of the grocer’s ledger traced—
Once I arrogantly rated
You below the cheapest lard;
Once your “g” enunciated,
With pedantic rigour, hard.
How your elements were blended
Naught I knew; but wild surmise
Hinted horrors that offended
Squeamish and fastidious eyes.
Now this view, unjust, unfounded,
I recant with deep remorse,
Knowing you are not compounded
From the carcass of the horse.
Still with glances far from genial
I beheld you, margarine,
And restricted you to menial
Services in my cuisine.
Still I felt myself unable,
Though you helped to fry my fish,
To endure you at my table
Nestling in the butter-dish.
Now that I have clearly tracked your
Blameless progress from the nut,
I proclaim your manufacture
As a boon, without a “but.”
Now I trudge to streets far distant,
Humbly in your queue to stand,
Till the grocer’s tired assistant
Dumps the packet in my hand.
Though you lack the special savour
Of the product of the churn,
Still the difference in flavour
I’m beginning to unlearn.
Thoughts of Devonshire or Dorset
From my mind have vanished quite,
Since the stern demands of war set
Limits to my appetite.
Butter is of course delicious;
But when that is dear and scant
Welcome, margarine, nutritious
Palatable lubricant!
A BALLAD OF EELS
[“Lord Desborough has just been reminding us of the neglected source of food supply that we have in the eels of our rivers and ponds. He stated, ‘The food value of an eel is remarkable. In food value one pound of eels is better than a loin of beef.… The greatest eel-breeding establishment in the world is at Comacchio, on the Adriatic. This eel nursery is a gigantic swamp of 140 miles in circumference. It has been in existence for centuries, and in the sixteenth century it yielded an annual revenue of £1,200 to the Pope.’”—Liverpool Daily Post.]
When lowering clouds refuse to lift
And spread depression far and wide,
And when the need of strenuous thrift
Is loudly preached on every side,
What boundless gratitude one feels
To Desborough, inspiring chief,
For telling us: “One pound of eels
Is better than a loin of beef”!
Of old, Popes made eel-breeding pay
(At least Lord Desborough says they did),
And cleared per annum in this way
Twelve hundred jingling, tingling quid.
In fact my brain in anguish reels
To think we never took a leaf
Out of the book which taught that eels
Are better than prime cuts of beef.
In youth, fastidiously inclined,
I own with shame that I eschewed,
Like most of my unthinking kind,
This luscious and nutritious food;
But now that Desborough reveals
Its value, with profound belief
I sing with him: “One pound of eels
Is better than a loin of beef.”
I chant it loudly in my bath,
I chant it when the sun is high,
And when the moon pursues her path
Noctambulating through the sky.
And when the bill of fare at meals
Is more than usually brief,
Again I sing: “One pound of eels
Is better than a loin of beef.”
It is a charm that never fails
When friends accost me in the street
And utter agonizing wails
About the price of butcher’s meat.
“Cheer up,” I tell them, “creels on creels
Are hastening to your relief;
Cheer up, my friends, one pound of eels
Is better than a loin of beef.”
Then all ye fearful folk, dismayed
By threatened shortage of supplies,
Let not your anxious hearts be swayed
By croakers or their dismal cries;
But, from Penzance to Galashiels,
From Abertillery to Crieff,
Remember that “one pound of eels
Is better than a loin of beef.”
But these are only pleasant dreams
Unless, to realize our hopes,
Proprietors of ponds and streams
Re-stock them, like the early Popes.
Then, though we still run short of keels
And corn be leaner in the sheaf,
We shall at least have endless eels,
Unnumbered super-loins of beef.
A SONG OF FOOD-SAVING
[Being a faithful effort to versify the article written by Dr. E. I. Spriggs, at the request of the Food Controller, on the food requirements of people of different ages and build.]
Good people, who long for a lead
On the paramount crux of the time,
I pray you give diligent heed
To the lessons I weave into rhyme;
And first, let us note, one and all—
Whether living in castle or “digs”—
“Large people need more than the small,”
For that’s the first maxim of Spriggs.
Now, as most of the food that we eat
Is wanted for keeping us warm,
The requisite quota of heat
Is largely a question of form;
And the ratio of surface to weight,
As anyone readily twigs,
Is the root of the point in debate
As sagely expounded by Spriggs.
Hence the more we resemble a sphere
Less heat on the surface is lost,
And the needful supply, it is clear,
Is maintained at less lavish a cost;
’Tis economy, then, to be plump
As partridges, puffins or pigs,
Who are never a prey to the hump,
So at least I interpret my Spriggs.
Next, the harder it freezes or snows
The greater the value of fat,
And the larger the appetite grows
Of John, Sandy, Taffy and Pat.
(Conversely, in Midsummer days,
When liquid more freely one swigs,
Less viand the appetite stays—
This quatrain’s a gloss upon Spriggs.)
For strenuous muscular work
A larger allowance of grub
We need than is due if we shirk
Exertion, and lounge in a pub;
For the loafer who rests in a chair
Everlastingly puffing at “cigs”
Can live pretty nearly on air,
So I gather at least from my Spriggs.
Why children need plentiful food
He nextly proceeds to relate:
Their capacity’s larger than you’d
Be disposed to infer from their weight;
They’re growing in bulk and in height,
They’re normally active as grigs,
And exercise breeds appetite—
This stanza is absolute Spriggs.
A QUEUE SONG
A jocular burden rings in my ear
Of Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese;
It tells of good cheer ere food was dear,
Of a time of plenty and peace and ease.
With bread thrown in there was ample fare
In Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese
For men to repair all the wear and tear
Of bodily tissue, though busy as bees.
Carnivorous folk might ask for more
Than Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese,
But that was before the stress of war
Had simplified meals with a steady squeeze.
For butter has almost fled from our ken,
And eggs are fetching enormous fees,
And the laying hen is on strike again,
And my grocer has run clean out of cheese.
So I’m bidding good-bye to the old refrain—
It isn’t attuned to times like these—
And I sing this strain as I stand in the rain,
Margarine, rice and potatoes, please!
THE IMPERFECT ECONOMIST
“I wear my very oldest suits,
I go about in shocking boots,
And (bar potatoes) feed on roots,
And various cereal substitutes
For wheat, and non-imported fruits.
No meat my table now pollutes,
But, though I spare warm-blooded brutes,
I sometimes sup on frogs and newts.
I often spend laborious days
Supported by a little maize;
And rice prepared in divers ways
My appetite at luncheon stays.
From sugar I avert my gaze;
Unsweetened tea my thirst allays;
I never go to any plays
Or smoke expensive Henry Clays.”
Our excellent Economist
His pet extravagance forgets,
Which rather spoils his little list—
His fifty daily cigarettes.
THE WAR PIG: A PALINODE
Much obloquy was thine in days of yore,
O Porker, and thy service manifold
(Save for a casual mention, curt and cold)
Ungrateful man continued to ignore;
Nay worse, he ceased not daily to outpour
Abuse upon thy breed, to sneer and scold,
Till every porcine trait, in days of old,
We learned to ridicule or to abhor.
But now the days of calumny are past,
These cruel innuendoes we disown,
And epithets designed to blame or blast
Take on a new and honorific tone;
For England needs thee, blameless Porker, now,
And Prothero salutes the sovereign sow.
VARIA
BATH
(With grateful acknowledgments to the anonymous but urbane author of “Bath in History and Social Traditions.”)
Fair city, though King Bladud and his story
Is largely wrapt in mythologic mist
And legends of your fame in ages hoary
Are scouted by the sceptic annalist,
One century at least of crowded glory
Inspires a recent genial eulogist
And prompts a humble rhymer to rehearse
Your merits in a piece of jingling verse.
I pass the Romans, business-like invaders;
Of their enduring traces he that runs
May read elsewhere; I pass the Saxon raiders
And tales of mediæval monks and nuns,
Of leper hospitals and mud-bath waders,
And hurry on to Beaux and Belles and Buns;
Your palmy days, me judice, began
In the Augustan period of Queen Anne.
The men who planned and built your noble Abbey
Well earned the homage of a sacred bard,
Yet in your golden roll it would be shabby
Your minor worthies wholly to discard;
And though your Bun, now sugarless and flabby
And highly-priced, is sadly shrunk and marred,
The first compounder of its rich delight
Ought not to pass into eternal night.
Of your great trio, Allen, Wood and Nash,
Allen, Mæcenas-postman, leaves me cold;
He had not one redeeming vice to clash
With his array of virtues manifold;
But he was patriotic, for his cash
Freed Wood’s majestic genius, sane yet bold,
Until a new and gracious city rose;
And Nash was far the finest of the Beaux.
At least this meed of praise must we accord him,
That he restrained the mutinies of Mode;
That Wesley was the only man who floored him;
That order was the essence of his code;
That bullies feared him, that the poor adored him,
And, though in age a thorny path be trode,
For many a year none could his seat disturb,
Mounted on Folly ridden on the curb.
What famous names, what episodes romantic
Are linked with yours in Clio’s sacred shrine
Ere piety pronounced you Corybantic
And seaside bathing compassed your decline!
“Sherry” and Siddons, Hannah the pedantic,
Fielding and Walpole, how your annals shine!—
Immortal Jane, and Herschel counting bars
And drilling fiddlers—and discovering stars.
Yet even when your vogue was slowly waning
Rich sunset splendours lingered on the scene,
When Sultan Beckford in your midst was reigning
And lending you an Oriental mien;
When D’Arblay, loyal to her haunts remaining,
Extolled your beauties varied and serene;
When in the Octagon men heard Magee
And Lansdown teams rejoiced in “W. G.”
Fashion may veer; the elegant and witty—
Light come, light go—may scatter far and wide,
But still the terraced colonnaded city
Stands proudly by the silver Avon’s tide,
And scenes that move to wonder, praise and pity,
Touched gently by the hand of Time, abide;
Still, O immortal Bath, you wear your crown
Fresh in your beauty, old in your renown.
IN WILD WALES
Dwarfing the town that to the hillside clings
On terraced slopes, the castle, nobly planned
And noble in its ruined greatness, flings
Its double challenge to the sea and land.
Oh, if the ancient spirit of the place
Could win free utterance in articulate tones,
What tales to hearten and inspire and brace
Would issue from these grey and lichened stones
Once manned and held by paladin and peer,
Now tenanted by jackdaws, bats and owls,
Save when the casual tourist through its drear
And grass-grown courts disconsolately prowls.
Once famous as the scene of Border fights,
Now watching, in the greatest war of all,
Old men, with their bilingual acolytes,
Beating, outside its gates, a little ball;
While on the crumbling battlements on high,
Where mail-clad men-at-arms kept watch and ward,
Adventurous sheep amaze the curious eye
Instead of grazing on the level sward.
Inland the amphitheatre of hills
Sweeps round with Snowdon as their central crest,
And murmurs of innumerable rills
Blend with the heaving of the ocean’s breast.
Already Autumn’s fiery finger laid
On heath and marsh and woodland far and wide
In all their gorgeous pageantry has arrayed
The tranquil beauties of the countryside.
Here every prospect pleases, and the spot,
Unspoilt, unvulgarized by man, remains,
Thanks largely to a System which has not
Accelerated or improved its trains.
Yet even here, amid untroubled ways,
Far from the city’s fevered, tainted breath,
Yon distant plume of yellow smoke betrays
The ceaseless labours of the mills of death.
THE LITTLE RIVER
Let mighty pens praise mighty rivers—
The Yang-tse-Kiang or Hoang-Ho,
In climes that desiccate the livers
Of foreigners who come and go.
Some may prefer the Mississippi,
Others the Nile, whose genial flood
Enriches the industrious “Gippy”
With gifts of fertilizing mud.
Bates found the Amazon amazing;
But, all unfit for lordly themes;
I choose the simpler task of praising
One of our humble Berkshire streams.
Here are no tropical surprises,
No cataracts roaring from the steep;
No hippo your canoe capsizes,
No rhinos on the bather creep.
Here, as along the banks you potter,
The fiercest creature is the gnat;
You may perhaps espy an otter,
You’re sure to see a water-rat.
The kingfisher, a living jewel,
On halcyon days darts in and out,
But never interrupts the duel
Between the angler and the trout.
Hard by the plovers wheel and clamour,
The gold is still upon the gorse,
And mystery and calm and glamour
Brood o’er the little river’s source,
Where, in a pool of blue-green lustre,
The water bubbles from the sand,
And pine-trees in a solemn cluster
Like sentinels around it stand.
And thence, through level champaign gliding,
Past cottages with russet tiles,
Past marsh and mead the stream goes sliding
For half-a-dozen tranquil miles,
Till, with its waters still untainted
And fringed with waving starwort stems,
With towns and factories unacquainted,
It merges in the silver Thames.
“Scorn not small things; their charm endears them,”
The ancient poet wisely sang;
Great rivers man admires but fears them;
We love our homely little Pang.
SIX VILE VERBS
When I see on a poster
A programme which “features”
Charlie Chaplin and other
Delectable creatures,
I feel just as if
Someone hit me a slam
Or a strenuous biff
On the mid diaphragm.
When I read in a story,
Though void of offences,
That somebody “glimpses”
Or somebody “senses,”
The chord that is struck
Fills my bosom with ire,
And I’m ready to chuck
The whole book in the fire.
When against any writer
It’s urged that he “stresses”
His points, or that something
His fancy “obsesses,”
In awarding his blame
Though the critic be right,
Yet I feel all the same
I could shoot him at sight.
But (worst of these horrors)
Whenever I read
That somebody “voices”
A national need,
As the Bulgars and Greeks
Are abhorred by the Serb,
So I feel toward the freaks
Who employ this vile verb.
SOME MORE BAD WORDS
In a recent verse adventure
I compiled “a little list”
Of the verbs deserving censure,
Verbs that “never would be missed”;
Now, to flatter the fastidious,
Suffer me the work to crown
With three epithets—all hideous—
And one noisome noun.
First, to add to the recital
Of the words that gall and irk,
Is the old offender “vital,”
Done to death by overwork;
Only a prolonged embargo
On its use by Press and pen
Can recall this kind of argot
Back to life again.
I, in days not very distant,
Though the memory gives me pain,
From the awful word “insistent”
Did not utterly refrain;
Once it promised to refresh us,
Seemed to be alert enough;
Now I loathe it, laboured, precious—
Merely verbal fluff.
Thirdly, in the sheets that daily
Cater for our vulgar needs,
There’s a word that figures gaily
In reviewers’ friendly screeds,
Who declare a book’s “arresting,”
Mostly, it must be confessed,
Meaning just the problem-questing
Which deserves arrest.
Last and vilest of this bad band
Is that noun of gruesome sound,
“Uplift,” which the clan of Chadband
Hold in reverence profound;
Used for a dynamic function
’Tis a word devoid of guile,
Only as connoting unction
It excites my bile.
TO A MODERN MUSE
O Metaphasia, peerless maid,
How can I fitly sing
The priceless decorative aid
To dialogue you bring,
Enabling serious folk, whose brains
Are commonplace and crude,
To soar to unimagined planes
Of sweet ineptitude.
Changed by your magic, common sense
Nonsensical appears,
And stars of sober influence
Shoot madly from their spheres.
You lure us from the beaten track,
From minding P.’s and Q.’s,
To paths where white is always black
And pies resemble pews.
Strange beasts, more strange than the giraffe,
You conjure up to view,
The flue-box and the forking-calf,
Unknown at any Zoo;
And new vocations you unfold,
Wonder on wonder heaping,
Hell-banging for the overbold,
And toffee-cavern keeping.
With you we hatch the pasty snipe,
And all undaunted face
Huge fish of unfamiliar type—
Bush-pike and bubble-dace;
Or, fired by hopes of lyric fame,
We deviate from prose,
And make it our especial aim
Bun-sonnets to compose.
I wonder did the ancients prove
Responsive to your spell,
Or, riveted to Reason’s groove,
Against your charms rebel.
And yet some senator obese,
In Rome long years ago,
May have misnamed a masterpiece
De Gallo bellico.
We know there were heroic men
Ere Agamemnon’s days,
Who passed forgotten from our ken,
Lacking a poet’s praise;
But, though great Metaphasiarchs
Have doubtless flourished sooner,
I’m sure their raciest remarks
Have been eclipsed by S*****r.
BALLADE OF FREE VERSE
Up to the end of the great Queen’s reign
Pegasus proved a tractable steed;
Verse was metrical, mostly sane;
“Fleshly” singers who wished to exceed
Seldom, however great was their need,
Held that prosody was a crime.
Critics were one and all agreed:
“Poets will never abandon rhyme.”
Now, inspired by a high disdain,
Grudging the past its rightful meed,
Georgian minstrels, might and main,
Urge that verse must be wholly freed
Now and for ever from rules that lead
Singers in chains to a jingling chime,
Slaves of the obscurantist screed:
“Poets will never abandon rhyme.”
Milton and Tennyson give them pain;
Marinetti’s the man they heed,
Grim apostle of stress and strain,
Noise, machinery, smell and speed.
Yet the best of the British breed,
Fighters who sing ’mid blood and grime,
Lend new force to the ancient rede:
“Poets will never abandon rhyme.”
Envoy
Prince, vers libre is a noxious weed;
Verse that is blank may be sublime;
Still, in spite of the Georgian creed,
Poets will never abandon rhyme.
THE STRIFE OF TONGUES
(Lines suggested by the recent demise of the inventor of Esperanto.)
As a patriotic Briton
I am naturally smitten
With disgust
When some universal lingo
By a zealous anti-Jingo
Is discussed.
Some there are who hold that Spanish
In the end is bound to banish
Other tongues;
Some again regard Slavonic
As a stimulating tonic
For the lungs.
I would sooner bank on Tuscan,
Ay, or even on Etruscan,
Than on Erse;
But fanatical campaigners,
Gaelic Leaguers and Sinn Feiners
Find it terse.
Some are moved to have a shy at
Persian, thanks to the Rubáiyát
And its ease;
But it’s quite another matter
If you’re anxious for to chatter
In Chinese.
To instruct a brainy brat in
Canine or colloquial Latin
May be wise;
But it’s not an education
As a fruitful speculation
I’d advise.
French? All elegance equips it,
But how oft on foreign lips it
Runs awry;
German, tainted, execrated,
Is for ages relegated
To the sty.
As for brand-new tongues invented
By professors discontented
With the old,
Well, the prospect of a “panto”
Played and sung in Esperanto
Leaves me cold.
“JONG”
(Lines suggested by an Australian aboriginal place-name commonly known by its last syllable.)
Fine names are found upon the map—
Kanturk and Chirk and Cong,
Grogtown and Giggleswick and Shap,
Chowbent and Chittagong;
But other places, less renowned,
In richer euphony abound
Than the familiar throng;
For instance, there is Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong.
In childhood’s days I took delight
In Lear’s immortal Dong,
Whose nose was luminously bright,
Who sang a silvery song.
He did not terrify the birds
With strange and unpropitious words
Of double-edged ontong;
I’m sure he hailed from Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong.
Prince Giglio’s bag, the fairy’s gift,
Helped him to right the wrong,
Encouraged diligence and thrift,
And “opened with a pong”;
But though its magic powers were great
It could not quite ejaculate
A word so proud and strong
And beautiful as Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong.
I crave no marble pleasure-dome,
No forks with golden prong;
Like Horace, in a frugal home
I’d gladly rub along,
Contented with the humblest cot
Or shack or hut, if it had got
A name like Billabong,
Or, better still, like Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong.
Sweet is the music of the spheres,
Majestic is Mong Blong,
And bland the beverage that cheers,
Called Sirupy Souchong;
But sweeter, more inspiring far
Than tea or peak or tuneful star
I deem it to belong
To such a place as Beeyah-byyah-bunniga-nelliga-jong.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND