Oh! to be in England
Now that April’s there.
And whoever wakes in England
Sees some morning in despair;
There ’s a horrible fog i’ the heart o’ the town,
And the greasy pavement is damp and brown,
While the rain-drop falls from the laden bough
In England now!
And after April when May follows,
How foolish seem the returning swallows.
Hark! how the east wind sweeps along the street,
And how we give one universal sneeze !
The hapless lambs at thought of mint-sauce bleat,
And ducks are conscious of the coming peas.
Lest you should think the Spring is really present,
A biting frost will come to make things pleasant;
And though the reckless flowers begin to blow,
They’d better far have nestled down below;
An English Spring sets men and women frowning,
Despite the rhapsodies of Robert Browning.
On the evening before his beheading, October 29, 1618, it is said that Sir Walter Raleigh wrote these words in his Bible:
E’en such is time! who takes in trust
Our youth, our joys and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust:
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
The Lord will raise me up I trust.
I didn’t know that when I first read the verse in a book of poetical quotations where it was listed among other entries under the category “Graves.” It rather takes on a different sort of significance if he really did write it knowing that he was going to have his head cut off the next day!
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
More sonnet pages: Sonnet 1 – From fairest creatures we desire increase … Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day … Sonnet 116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds …
Yes, I know it’s Lord Byron’s birthday and I should talk about him to mitigate the egregious sin of not having any of his poems on the site proper, but I am in the process of rectifying that glaring omission this week.
For the nonce, let us look at poetry on England’s beloved Queen Victoria, who died for real on today’s date in 1901. There were two attempts to send her to an earlier grave by would-be assassins, one of whom, incredibly enough, was a poet! William Topaz McGonagall, a/k/a “The World’s Worst Poet”, immortalized that event in the following offering:
Attempted Assassination of the Queen
God prosper long our noble Queen,
And long may she reign!
Maclean he tried to shoot her,
But it was all in vain.
For God He turned the ball aside
Maclean aimed at her head;
And he felt very angry
Because he didn’t shoot her dead.
There’s a divinity that hedges a king,
And so it does seem,
And my opinion is, it has hedged
Our most gracious Queen.
Maclean must be a madman,
Which is obvious to be seen,
Or else he wouldn’t have tried to shoot
Our most beloved Queen.
Victoria is a good Queen,
Which all her subjects know,
And for that God has protected her
From all her deadly foes.
