THE STORY OF HIAWATHA Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) Longfellow’s epic poem, written in trochaic tetrameter, has been much parodied. It begins thus: Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the…
COCKLES AND MUSSELS Irish trad. The origins of Cockles and Mussels are obscure and the legend of Molly Malone is disputed, though there is no doubting the song’s still-popular appeal in Dublin where it is almost the city anthem. Indeed, a statue of Molly hawking here wares was unveiled in Grafton Street in 1988. That…
This poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava (Ukraine) in the Crimean War (1854-56). 247 men of the 637 in the charge were killed or wounded. The date of the Battle was October 25, 1854 and Tennyson wrote this famous poem in…
Sea Fever (from Salt Water Ballads) John Masefield (1902) Masefield’s evocative poem appeared in his first volume of poetry published in 1902 in London by Grant Richards. In his Collected Poems, the first line was changed to ‘I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky’. There have been many…
WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS BY NIGHT Nahum Tate Tate (1652-1715) was born in Dublin. Apart from this carol, his most famous creation, Tate is remembered for his libretto for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and for the many ‘improved’ happy endings he provided for a number of Shakespeare’s tragedies. He also compiled a metrical version…
BUSINESS GIRLS Sir John Betjeman From the geyser ventilators Autumn winds are blowing down On a thousand business women Having baths in Camden Town. Waste pipes chuckle into runnels, Steam’s escaping here and there, Morning trains through Camden cutting Shake the Crescent and the Square. Early nip of changeful autumn, Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,…
Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the ages of eight and fourteen years is a 1907 children’s book written by Hilaire Belloc. There is a long tradition of ‘Naughty Children’ verses designed to terrify youngsters, the grand-daddy of them being the rather too frightening German collection Struwwelpeter. Belloc’s are far more…
JABBERWOCKY Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-98) is known to the whole world by his pen name Lewis Carroll. This poem is read by Alice in the early part of his novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), the successor to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The first verse was actually written years earlier in…
MY FAVOURITE THINGS from The Sound of Music Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens, Brown paper packages tied up with strings, These are a few of my favourite things. Cream coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels, Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles, Wild geese that…
How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix Robert Browning (1838) Browning wrote this in 1838 while on a sea voyage from London to Trieste. The incident it describes is fictional but refers to the (real) Pacification of Ghent in 1576, an historical treaty of such political complexity that I can’t be bothered…