Good Old Cutteridge

Let’s look at the poems. In the Introductory Book, we have this stanza with which we can easily identify, “At The Seaside” by Robert Louis Stevenson — “When I was down beside the sea / A wooden spade they gave to me / To dig the sandy shore. / My holes were empty, like a cup, / In every hole the sea came up / Until it could come no more.”

The poet’s name was not given for this beautiful little gem entitled “The Little Seed” in Book One — “In the heart of the seed buried deep, so deep, / A dear little plant lay fast asleep. / “Wake,” said the sunshine, “and creep to the light.” / “Wake,” said the voice of the raindrops bright. / The little plant heard it, and rose to see / What the wonderful outside world might be.”

“My Shadow” by Stevenson again, is also in this book. The last verse was tested and proven to be true, by placing a light behind me. This is how it goes — “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, / And what can be the use of him is more than I could see; / He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; / And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.”

Book Two is filled with wonderful poems and it was difficult selecting my favourite. We have “Day” which begins “I am busy,” said the sea, “Dirty Jim”, “Someone came knocking / At my wee small door” but the allegory of “The Spider and the Fly” with its high drama, steals the cake.

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, — / “ ‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy; / The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, / And I have many curious things to show you when you are there.” / “Oh, no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain, / For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.” After trying all sorts of stratagems, the sinister spider eventually resorts to flattery and the fly succumbs, much to her undoing. She is dragged and devoured in his “dismal den.” Nota bene. The writer is a poetess — Mary Howitt.

Allister Macmillan’s poem “The Isles of the West” is my first choice in Book Three. Stanza one: “Of all the beauty spots on Earth, the fairest and the best / Are the jewels of the Caribbean, the islands of the West. / Where Nature in profusion great her choicest gifts bestows / In land and sky, in temperature, in everything that grows.”

Now for Book Four. “A Tragic Story” won by a hair’s breadth. Ironically, this is one of the few humourous poems in all the books. The novelist William Thackeray adapted it from the original German. “There lived a sage in days of yore, / And he a handsome pigtail wore: / But wondered more and sorrowed more / Because it hung behind him.” For five stanzas more, the wise man suffered himself through all sorts of contortions. “And though he twist, and twirl and tack, / Alas! Still faithful to his back / The pigtail hangs behind him.”

Book Five is chock-full of my favourites. “The Last Buccaneer” by Charles Kingsley, begins like this:- “Oh England is a pleasant place for them that’s right and high, / But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I; / And such a port for mariners I ne’er shall see again, / As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish Main.”

“The Burial of Sir John Moore.” This pulsating poem from the pen of an Irish priest Charles Wolfe begins like this:- “Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, / As his corse to the rampart we hurried; / Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot / O’er the grave where our hero we buried.” The last stanza is simply outstanding “Slowly and sadly we laid him down, / From the field of his fame and gory; / We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, / But left him alone with his glory.”

The monumental — “The Sea King’s Burial” with 144 lines by Charles Mackay is the longest poem in the six readers. “My strength is failing fast,” / Said the sea-king to his men. / “I shall never sail the seas / Like a conqueror again; / But while yet a drop remains / Of life-blood in my veins, / Raise, oh, raise me from my bed, / Put the crown upon my head, / Put my sword in my hand, / And so lead me to the strand / Where my ship at anchor rides / Steadily; / If I cannot end my life / In the crimsoned battle-strife, / Let me die as I lived, / On the sea.”

Finally, the unforgettable masterpiece. “The Day is Done” from the pen of H W Longfellow, starts thus: “The day is done, and the darkness / Falls from the wings of Night, / As a feather is wafted downward / From an eagle in his flight.” The eleventh and last stanza is the cr?me de la cr?me — “And the night shall be filled with music, / And the cares that infest the day / Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, / And as silently steal away.”

Talking about Arabs, reminds me of this anecdote — There was once an Arab who dismounted from his camel and crawled into his little tent to sleep. The desert night was beastly cold.

The camel stuck his mouth in the tent and asked kindly, “I am trembling in the cold, may I bring just my nose into the tent?” The master allowed him to do so. Then gradually, the camel brought in his eyes, ears, head, neck, forelegs and so it went on until the beast occupied the entire tent and the Arab was pushed outside trembling in the cold.