Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

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Aurélien
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Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

Intention:
Most of us have tags of rhyme and song that somehow linger on in our poor, abused brains for years after we met them, every now and then sliding out of whatever dark recesses they are stored in to echo through our conscious minds.

So willy nilly, before we can stop ourselves, we begin mindlessly muttering lines of poetry long ago learned at school, parts of song lyrics that played in the background during especially memorable romantic episodes, annoying advertising jingles or political slogans....anything with a rhyme or a tune to it that somehow (without first asking our permission) found a permanent home within those little grey cells.

Let's have some fun, bravely sharing some of these lines of poetry, song, jingle and doggerel here, however ridiculous many of them are likely going to look and sound. Never mind if they are just odd fragments....who needs the full text of 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' anyway?

I suppose :roll: that you all absolutely insist that poor old Aurélien dredges the [murky] depths of what these days passes for his mind and posts the first sample:

  • The cloud-rifts share their amber light
    With the surface of the Mere

    I think the very stones are glad
    To feel each other near
    .

Robert Louis Stevenson - was he, perhaps, writing about the Scottish Springtime?

Edit Update 24 Feb '09:
Two interesting personal discoveries, folks:
  • 1) This thread is not only fun to post on, but also fun to revisit;
    2) Am finding that I am actually far too awestruck by others' contributions to dare post comments on them.
Last edited by Aurélien on 23 Feb 2009, 12:12, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Moonraker »

The first poem I learned by heart was Keat's Ode to Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.


I can only remember the first two lines now, though.
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

When at junior school I had to choose a poem to learn and recite. This is the poem.

My New Rabbit.

We bought him home I was so pleased,we made a rabbit hutch,
I gave him oats I talk to him,I love him very much.

Now when I talk to Rover dog, he answers me, bow-wow,
and when I talk to pussy-cat, she purrs and says, meow.

But bunny sits there looking wise and twinkling with his nose,
And never never ever tells a single thing he knows.

My Mother says the fairies must have put on him a spell,
They told him all their secrets, then they whispered, 'please don't tell'
So bunny sits their looking wise, and twinkles with his nose,
And never, never ever tells, a single thing he knows.

By Julie Robinson aged 10 (0r there abouts I think :lol: )

8)
Julian gave an exclamation and nudged George.
"See that? It's the black Bentley again. KMF 102!"

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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Philip Mannering »

I have learned many, many poems by heart. However I liked only few. This year there were many poems which I liked, but the most true, was the amazing poem, When Grandpa was a Boy. Full text:

So many things were different
When Grandpa was a boy.
He never saw a movie
And he seldom had a toy.


He never soared aloft in planes;
No radio had he;
An auto was unusual,
A downright novelty.


He walked three miles to school each day,
And wrote upon a slate.
And lots of things I daily eat,
Young Grandpa never ate.


Yet he is always telling me
About the 'good old days,'
And how he'd not exchange his youth
For all our modern ways.


He's sure he fished with greater luck
Along his special streams;
And hazelnuts were bigger
In Grandpa's day it seems.


I wonder, when I'm Grandpa's age,
If I will then enjoy
The thought that things were better,
When I was just a boy.


-Dorothy Walters

Amazing. 8)
"A holiday — a mystery — an adventure — and a happy ending for dear old Barney!" said Roger. "What more could anyone want?"
"An ice cream," said Snubby promptly. "Who's coming to buy one?" The Rubadub Mystery
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

Yes, :) , we've all got these snippets echoing around in our heads. Rhymes deliberately learnt "off by heart", of course....but at times also lines that sort of snuck in while our attention was focussed on other [sometimes quite unrelated] matters.

Example, the first stanza of one version of a poem written by an American (of British stock) about his favourite spot - his home town of Providence, Rhode Island:
  • P r o v i d e n c e

    Where bay and river tranquil blend,
    And leafy hillsides rise,
    The spires of Providence ascend
    Against the ancient skies.
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Ming »

I can see that I am not mistaken when I call the EBS forumites "elites"! 8) Amazing taste of poetry.

I really love I Carry Your Heart, by E. E. Cummings. I first came across it last summer, when our debate counselor and coach took all of us 'pests' out to a Mexican restaurant called El Toro, to wish good luck and say good bye to his good friend and team mate, who was leaving for USA the week afterwards. She is a Literature major and loved poetry more than anything else. Our coach selected a poem for each person to recite, according to his or her personality - and I got that one. :lol: Don't know why - it was the first time I'd even heard of that poem but I loved it nevertheless.

Another poem I read for the first time then, The Waste Land. Amazing.

One of the most influential songs in my life is The Poet and the Pendulum, by Nightwish. It's the song that makes me angry, happy, sad, at peace, everything. Beautiful lyrics.

"WHITE LANDS OF EMPATHICA"

The end.
The songwriter's dead.
The blade fell upon him
Taking him to the white lands
Of Empathica
Of Innocence
Empathica
Innocence

"HOME"

The dreamer and the wine
Poet without a rhyme
A widowed writer torn apart by chains of hell

One last perfect verse
Is still the same old song
Oh Christ how I hate what I have become

Take me home

Getaway, runaway, fly away
Lead me astray to dreamer's hideaway
I cannot cry 'cause the shoulder cries more
I cannot die, I, a whore for the cold world
Forgive me
I have but two faces
One for the world
One for God
Save me
I cannot cry 'cause the shoulder cries more
I cannot die, I, a whore for the cold world

My home was there 'n then
Those meadows of heaven
Adventure-filled days
One with every smiling face

Please, no more words
Thoughts from a severed head
No more praise
Tell me once my heart goes right

Take me home

Getaway, runaway, fly away...

"THE PACIFIC"

Sparkle my scenery
With turquoise waterfall
With beauty underneath
The Ever Free

Tuck me in beneath the blue
Beneath the pain, beneath the rain
Goodnight kiss for a child in time
Swaying blade my lullaby

On the shore we sat and hoped
Under the same pale moon
Whose guiding light chose you
Chose you all

"I'm afraid. I'm so afraid.
Being raped again, and again, and again
I know I will die alone.
But loved.


You live long enough to hear the sound of guns,
long enough to find yourself screaming every night,
long enough to see your friends betray you.

For years I've been strapped unto this altar.
Now I only have 3 minutes and counting.
I just wish the tide would catch me first and give me a death I always longed for ".


"DARK PASSION PLAY"

2nd robber to the right of Christ
Cut in half - infanticide
The world will rejoice today
As the crows feast on the rotting poet

Everyone must bury their own
No pack to bury the heart of stone
Now he's home in hell, serves him well
Slain by the bell, tolling for his farewell

The morning dawned, upon his altar
Remains of the dark passion play
Performed by his friends without shame
Spitting on his grave as they came

Getaway, runaway, fly away...

"Today, in the year of our Lord 2005,
Tuomas was called from the cares of the world.
He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day.
The music he wrote had too long been without silence.

He was found naked and dead,
With a smile in his face, a pen and 1000 pages of erased text."


Save me

"MOTHER & FATHER"

Be still, my son
You're home
Oh when did you become so cold?
The blade will keep on descending
All you need is to feel my love

Search for beauty, find your shore
Try to save them all, bleed no more
You have such oceans within
In the end
I will always love you

The beginning.
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

A good idea for a thread! It's fun reading the quotations.

W. B. Yeats' Cloths of Heaven has stayed in my mind since I was a teenager. Such beautiful words:

Had I the heavens' 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.


A poem/rhyme I've liked since early childhood, but which I don't remember in its entirety, is one by Robert Bridges:

THE cliff-top has a carpet
Of lilac, gold and green,
The blue sky bounds the ocean,
The white clouds scud between.

A flock of gulls are wheeling
And wailing round my seat;
Above my head the heaven,
The sea beneath my feet.


Another is a rhyme I used to read to my children when they were small:

When my brother Tommy
Sleeps in bed with me,
He doubles up and makes himself
Exactly like a V.
And 'cause the bed is not so wide
A part of him is on my side.


Then there are the opening verses of Lewis Carroll's You are Old, Father William (very apt for "Old Aurélien" :!: )

"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."


Oh, and Eleanor Farjeon's Cats Sleep Anywhere - my whole family can recite that word for word:

Cats sleep anywhere,
Any table, any chair,
Top of piano, window-ledge,
In the middle, on the edge.
Open drawer, empty shoe,
Anybody’s lap will do.
Fitted in a cardboard box,
In the cupboard with your frocks.
Anywhere! They don’t care!
Cats sleep anywhere!


Anita
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Ming »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:Then there are the opening verses of Lewis Carroll's You are Old, Father William (very apt for "Old Aurélien" :!: )
For some reason, the opening verses always remind me of Fatty's poem about poor Goon!
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

Wow! What a flood of rhyme we have unleashed here.

Books are a large part of my world, probably true of most of us here, and so [standing upright to declaim]:
  • Good Books
    by Edgar A. Guest 1881 - 1959
  • Good books are friendly things to own.
    If you are busy they will wait.
    They will not call you on the phone
    Or wake you if the hour is late.
    They stand together row by row,
    Upon the low shelf or the high.
    But if you're lonesome this you know:
    You have a friend or two nearby
    .
  • The fellowship of books is real.
    They're never noisy when you're still.
    They won't disturb you at your meal.
    They'll comfort you when you are ill.
    The lonesome hours they'll always share.
    When slighted they will not complain.
    And though for them you've ceased to care
    Your constant friends they'll still remain
    .
  • Good books your faults will never see
    Or tell about them round the town.
    If you would have their company
    You merely have to take them down.
    They'll help you pass the time away,
    They'll counsel give if that you need.
    He has true friends for night and day
    Who has a few good books to read
    .
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I remember Kate Mary saying that some of her best friends were books! Books certainly are very loyal friends and can be a great comfort when life is difficult.

I used to have a bookmark with the following quotation written on it:

Let your bookcases and your shelves
Be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds.
Pluck the fruit that grows therein,
Gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh.


Anita
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

As Anita has already posted two of my favourite poems *No :lol: , not Carroll's version of 'Father William' be it noted* I've had to dredge up another cat poem:
  • On a Cat, Ageing
    by Alexander Gray (1882 – 1968)
  • He blinks upon the hearth-rug,
    And yawns in deep content,
    Accepting all the comforts
    That Providence has sent
    .
  • Louder he purrs and louder,
    In one glad hymn of praise
    For all the night’s adventures,
    For quiet, restful days
    .
  • Life will go on for ever,
    With all that cat can wish;
    Warmth, and the glad procession
    Of fish and milk and fish
    .
  • Only – the thought disturbs him –
    He’s noticed once or twice,
    The times are somehow breeding
    A nimbler race of mice
    .
Poor old puss, as eventually happens to us humans he's been overtaken by the aging process.....

Old Aurélien wanders off to continue reading Shirley Rousseau Murphy's latest 'Joe Grey' moggy-mouser-murder-mystery, "CAT PLAYING CUPID".
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

And, a special dedication to
  • Barney,
    Timmy,
    and most of EB's other canine characters
    (S)Tinker and the like excepted.
  • "...Nick-nack, paddy-whack,
    Give the dog a bone;
    This old man
    Came rolling home..."


Old Aurélien (st)rolls home from the pub..... 8)
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Moonraker »

I read Cloths of Heaven at my son's wedding (the last time I was in the pulpit). It is a favourite poem of my daughter-in-law's. Unfortunately, I didn't understand a word of it. :?
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Aurélien »

Moonraker wrote:I read Cloths of Heaven at my son's wedding (the last time I was in the pulpit). It is a favourite poem of my daughter-in-law's. Unfortunately, I didn't understand a word of it. :?
Ah, friends, understanding - of life in general as well as poetry in particular - is on many levels, and [usually] improves with time and experience.

As just one example of this, Ming (no doubt :wink: influenced by the education that being in contact with a certain Moonraker has been....to us all :) ) understands my quite outrageous, elephantine sense of humour well enough, but PM is still quietly coming to grips with it.

The poem posted just below I've never fully understood, and I don't know the circumstances under which it was written, but some of Longfellow's lines here still have the power to inspire, uplift and reassure old Aurélien about his place in the cosmos.
  • ALL ARE ARCHITECTS OF FATE
    by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • All are architects of Fate,
    Working in these walls of Time:
    Some with massive deeds and great,
    Some with ornaments of rhyme
    .
  • Nothing useless is or low;
    Each thing in its place is best;
    And what seems but idle show
    Strengthens and supports the rest
    .
  • For the structure that we raise
    Time is with materials filled;
    Our todays and yesterdays
    Are the blocks with which we build
    .
  • Truly shape and fashion these,
    Leave no yawning gaps between;
    Think not, because no man sees,
    Such things will remain unseen
    .
  • In the elder days of art
    Builders wrought with greatest care
    Each minute and unseen part,
    For the gods see everywhere
    .
  • Let us do our work as well,
    Both the unseen and the seen;
    Make the house where gods may dwell
    Beautiful, entire and clean
    .
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Re: Poetry, Jingles, Doggerel and Song Lyrics

Post by Philip Mannering »

No, Aurelien, I understand your, as you say, "outrageous, elephantine sense of humour," but the thing is that I have a sense of humour too - that's why I said "Sir" and wrote a serious post (with a wink)! :lol:

Anyone heard of "The Brook" by Alfred Tennyson?
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"An ice cream," said Snubby promptly. "Who's coming to buy one?" The Rubadub Mystery
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