The Bishop (John Betjeman)

All the village street is humming.

What's the news? The bishop's coming.

All the Mothers' Union say

They'll be baking cakes today.

The bishop will be asked to try

Mrs Brewer's apple pie.

The bishop will be asked to taste

Mrs Stewer's almond paste.

The bishop will be given part

Of Mrs Gurney's cherry tart.

The bishop will, without a question,

Leave with violent indigestion.

In the vicarage the news

Means a raking out of flues

And a polishing of shoes

And a brandishing of brooms

And a turning out of rooms

And a putting on of kettles

And a burnishing of metals.

Such a dusting, such a mending,

You would think the world was ending.

After half an hour of smoking

Which had left the vicar choking,

At last the drawing room fire is burning

And it's time we should be turning

To his wife and daughter seated

All things ready and completed.

The vicar's little daughter Florence! –

Questions pour from her in torrents

Which her agitated mother

Cannot really check or smother

Save by giving information

Even in this situation.

Thus she waits the bishop's coming,

Nervously her fingers drumming.

And to relieve this strained delaying

I'll record what they are saying,

And to make it clear and neater

Use another style and metre.

'Pray, what is a bishop?' says dear little Floss

To her mother, 'Oh tell me, please do.'

'A bishop, my dear, wears a pectoral cross

And is much more important than you.'

'And pray, why is that?' says this sweet little thing

With her passionate love of research.

'Because,' says her mother, 'he's made by the king,

Or the queen, a great lord in the Church.

'And if you will look at the coin of our realm

Near the name of the monarch it saith

Fid. Def. or F.D., which is Latin, you see,

And means the Defender of Faith.

Our bishops by bishops are always ordained.

They lay hands on their heads. And the track

Of these consecrations, our Church has maintained

To the twelve first apostles goes back.

But remember, dear Florence, that under the skin

They are men (the apostles were too)

With the usual dose of original sin

And the grace to withstand it, like you.'

'And if they are ordinary people, Mamma,

Then can they do just as they like?

Is that why the bishop drives round in a car

While Daddy rides round on a bike?'

'Your father has only to visit the sick

And call on parochial electors,

While the bishop must go in motor-car quick

To admonish recalcitrant rectors.

Then dash up to Parliament, speak in debates

And sit in Church House on committees,

For erecting new churches on building estates

By selling old churches in cities.

There are other things too that a bishop must do

Which seem more important to me,

Such as being the friend and the father in God

To the clergymen here in his see.

In the church of the Celts, which is old, very old,

And brought Christ to the West before Rome

Send Augustine to Kent, they used, we are told,

To keep all their bishops at home.

And ordaining new priests and confirming the youth

Is really what bishops are for –

To ordain and confirm and, to tell you the truth,

I am sorry they're made to do more.

So soon, when you see our dear bishop processing

In mitre and cope down the lane,

Remember the hand which he raises in blessing

Has also the power to ordain.'

'Oh! thank you very much, Mamma,

How very well informed you are,

I wonder if you now could tell ....'

'Thank goodness, Florence, there's the bell.

The bishop's waiting at the door.

So do smooth out your pinafore,

And don't ask questions any more.'

The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God's infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God's glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

  I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms' self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
  If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man's beating heart,
Laying, like air's fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God's and Mary's Son.
  Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.
  So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man's mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
  Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;

Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God's love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.

Jerusalem the golden (J.M. Neale and Hymns Ancient and Modern)

Jerusalem the golden,

  With milk and honey blest,
Beneath thy contemplation

  Sink heart and voice opprest.
I know not, O I know not,

  What social joys are there,
What radiancy of glory,

  What light beyond compare.

They stand, those halls of Sion,

  Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel,

  And all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,

   The daylight is serene,
The pastures of the blessed

  Are decked in glorious sheen.

There is the throne of David,

  And there, from care released,
The song of them that triumph,

  The shout of them that feast;
And they who, with their Leader,

  Have conquered in the fight,
For ever and for ever

  Are clad in robes of white.

O sweet and blessèd country,

  Shall I ever see thy face?
O sweet and blessèd country,

  Shall I ever win thy grace?
Exult, O dust and ashes!

  The Lord shall be thy part:
His only, his for ever,

  Thou shalt be, and thou art!

from De contemptu mundi (Bernard of Cluny)

Urbs Sion aurea, patria lactea, cive decora,

omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora.
Nescio, nescio quae iubilatio, lux tibi qualis,
quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.
Laude studens ea tollere mens mea, victa fatiscit.
O bona gloria, vincor in omnia laus tua vicit.
Sunt Sion atria coniubilantia, martyre plena,
cive micantia, principe stantia, luce serena.
Sunt ibi pascua mitibus afflua praestita sanctis.
regis ibi thronus agminis et sonus est epulantis,
gens duce splendida, concio candida vestibus albis;
sunt sine fletibus in Sion aedibus, aedibus almis.

from Harrow the Ninth, Act One, chapter 10 (Tamsyn Muir)

Before Harrowhark could take this prompt to make a hasty exit, the necromancer of the Fifth said without transition: 'Are you interested in Lyctoral materials?'

This was an introduction, or a probe, or something different altogether.  Scrutiny into the Ninth's affairs might be deflected.  She was more intrigued by the idea of an introduction.

'If you are asking whether or not we have any within my House,' said Harrow slowly, 'I will not answer that question.'

'What a shame!  I understand,' said Pent, who did not appear to be discomfited by refusals, or by the sacramental paint.  'It was more to gauge your interest though.  This library is stuffed.  The books, now, the books are interesting - but the Lyctoral traces - phwoar.'

Abigail Pent had not seemed the type of woman to articulate phwoar.  She said it very boyishly.

Heaven (George Herbert)

O Who will show me those delights on high?
            Echo: I.
Thou Echo, thou art mortall, all men know.
            Echo: No.
Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves?
            Echo: Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide?
            Echo: Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly.
            Echo: Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse?
            Echo: Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight?
            Echo: Light.
Light to the minde: what shall the will enjoy?
            Echo: Joy.
But are there cares and businesse with the pleasure?
            Echo: Leisure.
Light, joy, and leisure; but shall they persever?
            Echo: Ever.

Vergissmeinnicht (Keith Douglas)

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move,
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

A Sonnet (J.K. Stephen)

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times - good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the ABC

Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland (William Wordsworth)

Two Voices are there; one is of the Sea,
One of the Mountains; each a mighty Voice;
In both from age to age Thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen Music, Liberty!
There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee
Thou fought'st against Him; but hast vainly striven;
Thou from thy Alpine Holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft:
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left!
For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be
That mountain Floods should thunder as before,
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!

The Motor Bus (A.D. Godley)

What is this that roareth thus?

Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo -
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live: -
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!

Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!

The Uncertainty of the Poet (Wendy Cope)

I am a poet.

I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.

I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.

I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am' - 

Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?

Am I?' - a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!

Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am.

I am fond of a 'very'.

I am of very fond bananas.

Am I a poet?

A Birl for Burns (Seamus Heaney)

From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,
That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them
And stick to still in County Antrim
Was in my ear.
From east of Bann it westered in
On the Derry air.

My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,
They happed themselves until it thowed,
By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed
And snedded thrissles,
And when the rigs were braked and hoed
They’d wet their whistles.

Old men and women getting crabbèd
Would hark like dogs who’d seen a rabbit,
Then straighten, stare and have a stab at
Standard habbie:
Custom never staled their habit
O’ quotin’ Rabbie.

Leg-lifting, heartsome, lightsome Burns!
He overflowed the well-wrought urns
Like buttermilk from slurping churns,
Rich and unruly,
Or dancers flying, doing turns
At some wild hooley.

For Rabbie’s free and Rabbie’s big,
His stanza may be tight and trig
But once he sets the sail and rig
Away he goes
Like Tam-O-Shanter o’er the brig
Where no one follows.

And though his first tongue’s going, gone,
And word lists now get added on
And even words like stroan and thrawn
Have to be glossed,
In Burns’s rhymes they travel on
And won’t be lost.

from The Invention of Love, Act Two (Tom Stoppard)

AEH  Oxford in the Golden Age! - the hairshirts versus the Aesthetes: the neo-Christians versus the neo-pagans: the study of classics for advancement in the fair of the world versus the study of classics for the advancement of classical studies - what emotional storms, and oh what a tiny teacup.  

from A Practical Introduction to Greek Accentuation, preface to the second edition (Henry W. Chandler)

Among the lesser evils of existence must surely be numbered the necessity of turning once again to an insipid subject long since thrown aside and forgotten.  This I have been obliged to do, and to perform the dismal duty of revision under some considerable disadvantages.  All my original notes and collections were consigned to the flames years ago, in the firm belief that they would never more be wanted; and the loss of such materials it is now impossible to repair.  In circumstances so embarrassing real help is hard to get.  The indefatigable Lobeck is the only man who collected words of like form on a large scale, and his works were pretty freely used in the first edition.  A few more references to them are now added.  Beyond consulting Lobeck and the Paris Thesaurus, I could do little more than read the grammarians and scholiasts over again and glean a few fresh facts.  In this way, however, considerable additions have been made to the book, though, by enlarging the pages and practising the arts of typographical compression, the original number of pages has barely been exceeded.  Some parts have been rewritten, and scarcely a single paragraph reappears without some change and, it is hoped, improvement.  That all defects have been made good it would be unreasonable to expect, for in the first place, he who deals with Greek accentuation independently, as I have done, has to contend with hosts of petty details which distract his attention, and not unfrequently exhaust his patience.  Every alteration has to be made with the greatest circumspection, and it would be wonderful indeed, where the chances of error are so great, if I have not sometimes gone astray.  In the next place, it is proverbially difficult to detect one's own mistakes, and here let it be remembered that, though I invited criticism and correction, I have received no assistance of any sort or kind.  Let those who noticed faults in the first edition know that they alone are answerable if those faults are repeated in the second.  They had but to speak, and whatever was false or misleading would have been corrected.  All censure now comes too late to be of any use to me.

[...]

In bidding a last farewell to a subject in which I never took more than a languid interest, I may be permitted to say that in England, at all events, every man will accent his Greek properly who wishes to stand well with the world.  He whose accents are irreproachable may indeed be no better than a heathen, but concerning that man who misplaces them, or, worse still, altogether omits them, damaging inferences will certainly be drawn, and in most instances with justice.

from How to be Topp, chapter 5, How to be Topp in English (Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle)

i have said there only one peom on the english language e.g. The Brook which chater chater as it flo my dear it is obviously a girlie just like fotherington-tomas.  However there are other peoms which creep in from time to time there is one which go

Har fleag har fleag har fleag onward

Into the er rode the 600.

There are as well lars porsena of clusium elegy in country churchyard loss of the royal george and chevy chase.  Anything to do with dafodils is also grate favourite of english masters but then nothing is beyond them they will even set burns (rabbie) who is uterly weedy.

It is farely easy to be topp in english and sometimes you may find yourself even getting interested.  If that happens of course you can always draw junctions and railway lines on your desk viz

The Charge of the Light Brigade (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

I

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
  Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
  Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
  Rode the six hundred.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
  All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
  Not the six hundred.

V

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
  Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
  Left of six hundred.

VI

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
  All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
  Noble six hundred!

Foreword to The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)

This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it.  It was begun soon after The Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years.  I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.

When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures.  But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told.  The process had begun in the writing of The Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring.  The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got it, but they had to wait a long time; for the composition of The Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me.  The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book I.  In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria.  There I halted for a long while.  It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River late in 1941.  In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book III, and the beginnings of Chapters 1 and 3 of Book V; and there as the beacons flared in Anórien and Théoden came to Harrowdale I stopped.  Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.

It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor.  These chapters, eventually to bcome Book IV, were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the R.A.F.  Nonetheless it took another five years before the tale was brought to its present end; in that time I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and the days though less dark were no less laborious.  Then when the 'end' had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards.  And it had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means.

The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale.  The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amaze them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.  As a guide I had only my own feeling for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault.  Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similiar opinions of their works, or of the kind of writing that they evidently prefer.  But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please.  It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved.  The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none.  It is neither allegorical nor topica.  As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches; but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit.  The crucial chapter, 'The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale.  It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted.  Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that begain in 1939 or its sequels.

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.  If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied.  Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth.  In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference.  But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.  I much prefer history, real or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.  I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

An author cannot of course reamin wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.  It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarilty the most powerful influences.  One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years.  By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.  Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed by some that 'The Scouring of the Shire' reflects the situation in Englad at the time when I was finishing my tale.  It does not.  It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever.  It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back.  The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways.  Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important.  I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.

Naming of Parts (Henry Reed)

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,

For today we have naming of parts.

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy (A.E. Housman)

ALCMAEON  CHORUS

Cho. O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?

My object in enquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,

Nod with your hand to signify as much.
Alc. I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.
Cho. Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars?
Alc. Plying by turns my partnership of legs.
Cho. Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
Alc. Mud’s sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
Cho. To learn your name would not displease me much.
Alc. Not all that men desire do they obtain.
Cho. Might I then hear at what your presence shoots?
Alc. A shepherd’s questioned mouth informed me that –
Cho. What? for I know not yet what you will say.
Alc. Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
Cho. Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
Alc. – this house was Eriphyla’s, no one’s else.
Cho. Nor did he shame his throat with hateful lies.
Alc. Might I then enter, passing through the door?
Cho. Go, chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is very much the safest plan.
Alc. I go into the house with heels and speed.

CHORUS

In speculation                                             (Strophe)
I would not willingly acquire a name
For ill-digested thought,
But, after pondering much,
To this conclusion I at last have come:
Life is uncertain.
This truth I have written deep
In my reflective midriff,
On tablets not of wax.
Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there
For many reasons: Life, I say, is not
A stranger to uncertainty.
Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
This fact did I discover,
Nor did the Delphic tripod bark it out,
Nor yet Dodona.
Its native ingenuity sufficed
My self-taught diaphragm.

Why should I mention                                 (Antistrophe)
The Inachian daughter, loved of Zeus,
Her whom of old the gods,
More provident than kind,
Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,
A gift not asked for:
And sent her forth to learn
The unfamiliar science
Of how to chew the cud?
She, therefore, all about the Argive fields,
Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,
Nor did they disagree with her.
Yet, howso’er nutritious, such repasts,
I do not hanker after.
Never may Cypris for her seat select
My dappled liver!
Why should I mention lo? Why indeed?
I have no notion why.

But now does my boding heart                    (Epode)
Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
A strain not meet for the dance.
Yea, even the palace appears
To my yoke of circular eyes
(The right, nor omit I the left)
Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
Garnished with woolly deaths
And many shipwrecks of cows.
I therefore in a Cissian strain lament,
And to the rapid,
Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
Resounds in concert
The battering of my unlucky head.

Eriphyla: (within) O, I am smitten with a hatchet’s jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
Cho. I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
Erip. He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
Cho. I would not be reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.
Erip. O! O! another stroke! That makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
Cho. If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct.

from Evelina, volume I, letter XXXIII (Frances Burney)

When we had been out near two hours, and expected every moment to stop at the place of our destination, I observed that Lady Howard’s servant, who attended us on horseback, rode on forward till he was out of sight: and soon after returning, came up to the chariot window, and delivering a note to Madame Duval, said he had met a boy who was just coming with it to Howard Grove from the clerk of Mr. Tyrell.

While she was reading it, he rode round to the other window, and making a sign for secrecy, put into my hand a slip of paper, on which was written, “Whatever happens, be not alarmed - for you are safe - though you endanger all mankind!”

I readily imagined that Sir Clement must be the author of this note, which prepared me to expect some disagreeable adventure: but I had no time to ponder upon it; for Madame Duval had no sooner read her own letter, than, in an angry tone of voice, she exclaimed, “Why, now, what a thing is this! here we’re come all this way for nothing!”