Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Edward Lear Read online

  May I not frown and grind my teeth and growl?

  E — Of course you may; but may not I growl too!

  May I not frown and grind my teeth like you!

  J — See Catherine comes! To her, to her,

  Let each his several miseries refer;

  She shall decide whose woes are least or worst,

  And which, as growler, shall rank last or first.

  Catherine — Proceed to growl, in silence I’ll attend,

  And hear your foolish growlings to the end;

  And when they’re done, I shall correctly judge

  Which of your griefs are real or only fudge.

  Begin, let each his mournful voice prepare,

  (And pray, however angry, do not swear!)

  J — We came abroad for warmth, and find sharp cold!

  Cannes is an imposition, and we’re sold.

  E — Why did I leave my native land, to find

  Sharp hailstones, snow, and most disgusting wind?

  J — What boots it that we orange trees or lemons see,

  If we must suffer from such vile inclemency?

  E — Why did I take the lodgings I have got,

  Where all I don’t want is: — all I want not?

  J — Last week I called alout, O! O! O! O!

  The ground is wholly overspread with snow!

  Is that at any rate a theme for mirth

  Which makes a sugar-cake of all the earth?

  E — Why must I sneeze and snuffle, groan and cough,

  If my hat’s on my head, or if it’s off?

  Why must I sink all poetry in this prose,

  The everlasting blowing of my nose?

  J — When I walk out the mud my footsteps clogs,

  Besides, I suffer from attacks of dogs.

  E — Me a vast awful bulldog, black and brown,

  Completely terrified when near the town;

  As calves perceiving butchers, trembling reel,

  So did my calves the approaching monster feel.

  J — Already from two rooms we’re driven away,

  Because the beastly chimneys smoke all day;

  Is this a trifle, say? Is this a joke?

  That we, like hams, should be becooked in smoke?

  E — Say, what avails it that my servant speaks

  Italian, English, Arabic, and Greek,

  Besides Albanian; if he don’t speak French,

  How can I ask for salt, or shrimps, or tench?

  J — When on the foolish hearth fresh wood I place,

  It whistles, sings, and squeaks, before my face;

  And if it does unless the fire burns bright,

  And if it does, yet squeaks, how can I write?

  E — Alas! I needs must go and call on swells,

  That they may say, “O Pray draw me the Estrelles.”

  On one I went last week to leave a card,

  The swell was out — the servant eyed me hard:

  “This chap’s a thief disguised,” his face expressed:

  If I go there again, may I be blest!

  J — Why must I suffer in this wind and gloom!

  Roomattics in a vile cold attic room?

  E — Swells drive about the road with haste and fury;

  As Jehu drove about all over Jewry.

  Just now, while walking slowly, I was all but

  Run over by the Lady Emma Talbot,

  Whom not long since a lovely babe I knew,

  With eyes and cap-ribbons of perfect blue.

  J — Downstairs and upstairs, every blessed minute,

  There’s each room with pianofortes in it.

  How can I write with noises such as those?

  And, being always discomposed, compose?

  E — Seven Germans through my garden lately strayed

  And all on instruments of torture played:

  They blew, they screamed, they yelled: how can I paint

  Unless my room is quiet, which it ain’t?

  J — How can I study if a hundred flies

  Each moment blunder into both my eyes?

  E — How can I draw with green or blue or red,

  If flies and beetles vex my old bald head?

  J — How can I translate German Metaphys-

  -Ics, if mosquitoes round my forehead whizz?

  E — I’ve bought some bacon (Though it’s much too fat),

  But round the house there prowls a hideous cat;

  Once should I see my bacon in her mouth,

  What care I if my rooms look north or south?

  J — Pain from a pane in one cracked window comes,

  Which sings and whistles, buzzes, shrieks and hums;

  In vain amain with pain the pane with this chord

  I fain would strain to stop the beastly dischord!

  E — If rain and wind and snow and such like ills

  Continue here, how shall I pay my bills?

  For who through cold and slush and rain will come

  To see my drawings and to purchase some?

  And if they don’t, what destiny is mine?

  How can I ever get to Palestine?

  J — The blinding sun strikes through the olive trees,

  When I walk out, and always makes me sneeze.

  E — Next door, if all night long the moon is shining,

  There sits a dog, who wakes me up with whining.

  Cath. — Forbear! You both are bores, you’ve growled enough:

  No longer will I listen to such stuff!

  All men have nuisances and bores to afflict ‘um;

  Hark then, and bow to my official dictum!

  For you, Johannes, there is most excuse,

  (Some interruptions are the very deuce),

  You’re younger than the other cove, who surely

  Might have some sense — besides, you’re somewhat poorly.

  This therefore is my sentence, that you nurse

  The Baby for seven hours, and nothing worse.

  For you, Edwardus, I shall say no more

  Than that your griefs are fudge, yourself a bore;

  Return at once to cold, stewed, minced, hashed mutton —

  To wristbands ever guiltless of a button —

  To raging winds and sea (where don’t you wish

  Your luck may ever let you catch one fish?) —

  To make large drawings nobody will buy —

  To paint oil pictures which will never dry —

  To write new books which nobody will read —

  To drink weak tea, on tough old pigs to feed —

  Till spring-time brings the birds and leaves and flowers,

  And time restores a world of happier hours.

  THE HERALDIC BLAZON OF FOSS THE CAT

  THE DUCK AND THE KANGAROO IN THE AUTOGRAPH OF EDWARD LEAR

  POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED WORKS

  CONTENTS

  HOW PLEASANT TO KNOW MR. LEAR

  HIS GARDEN

  WHEN “GRAND OLD MEN” PERSIST IN FOLLY

  SAITH THE POET OF NONSENSE

  AT DINGLE BANK

  EPITAPH

  MRS. JAYPHER

  SPOTS OF GREECE

  BUT AH! (THE LANDSCAPE PAINTER SAID)

  IT IS A VIRTUE IN INGENUOUS YOUTH

  THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO FELT PERT

  THERE WAS AN OLD PERSON OF PAXO

  PARODY OF TENNYSON’S ‘TO EDWARD LEAR ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE’

  THE CHILDREN OF THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT

  COLD ARE THE CRABS

  THE SCROOBIOUS PIP

  THE ADVENTURES OF MR. LEAR, THE POLLY AND THE PUSSEYBITE ON THEIR WAY TO THE RITERTITLE MOUNTAINS

  HOW PLEASANT TO KNOW MR. LEAR

  “How pleasant to know Mr.Lear!”

  Who has written such volumes of stuff!

  Some think him ill-tempered and queer,

  But a few think him pleasant enough.

  His mind is concrete and fastidious,

  His nose is remarkably big;

  Hi
s visage is more or less hideous,

  His beard it resembles a wig.

  He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,

  Leastways if you reckon two thumbs;

  Long ago he was one of the singers,

  But now he is one of the dumbs.

  He sits in a beautiful parlour,

  With hundreds of books on the wall;

  He drinks a great deal of Marsala,

  But never gets tipsy at all.

  He has many friends, lay men and clerical,

  Old Foss is the name of his cat;

  His body is perfectly spherical,

  He weareth a runcible hat.

  When he walks in waterproof white,

  The children run after him so!

  Calling out, “He’s gone out in his night-

  Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!”

  He weeps by the side of the ocean,

  He weeps on the top of the hill;

  He purchases pancakes and lotion,

  And chocolate shrimps from the mill.

  He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish,

  He cannot abide ginger beer:

  Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,

  How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

  HIS GARDEN

  And this is certain; if so be

  You could just now my garden see,

  The aspic of my flowers so bright

  Would make you shudder with delight.

  And if you vos to see my rozziz

  As is a boon to all men’s nozziz, —

  You’d fall upon your back and scream —

  “O Lawk! O criky! it’s a dream!”

  WHEN “GRAND OLD MEN” PERSIST IN FOLLY

  When “Grand old men” persist in folly

  In slaughtering men and chopping trees,

  What art can soothe the melancholy

  Of those whom futile “statesmen” teaze?

  The only way their wrath to cover

  To let mankind know who’s to blame-o —

  Is first to rush by train to Dover

  And then straight onward to Sanremo.

  SAITH THE POET OF NONSENSE

  Saith the Poet of Nonsense

  “Thoughts into my head do come

  Thick as flies upon a plum.”

  AT DINGLE BANK

  He lived at Dingle Bank — he did; —

  He lived at Dingle bank;

  And in his garden was one Quail,

  Four tulips, and a Tank;

  And from his windows he could see

  The otion and the River Dee.

  His house stood on a Cliff, — it did,

  In aspic it was cool;

  And many thousand little boys

  Resorted to his school,

  Where if of progress they could boast

  He gave them heaps of buttered toast.

  But he grew rabid-wroth, he did,

  If they neglected books,

  And dragged them to adjacent cliffs

  With beastly Button Hooks,

  And there with fatuous glee he threw

  Them down into the otion blue.

  And in the sea they swam, they did, —

  All playfully about,

  And some eventually became

  Sponges, or speckled trout; —

  But Liverpool doth all bewail

  Their Fate; — likewise his Garden Quail.

  EPITAPH

  Beneath these high Cathedral stairs

  Lie the remains of Susan Pares.

  Her name was Wiggs, it was not Pares,

  But Pares was put to rhyme with stairs.

  MRS. JAYPHER

  Mrs. Jaypher found a wafer

  Which she struck upon a note;

  This she took and gave the cook.

  Then she went and bought a boat

  Which she paddled down the stream

  Shouting, “Ice produces cream,

  Beer when churned produces butter!

  Henceforth all the words I utter

  Distant ages thus shall note —

  ‘From the Jaypher Wisdom-Boat.’”

  Mrs Jaypher said it’s safer

  If you’ve lemons in your head

  First to eat a pound of meat

  And then to go at once to bed.

  SPOTS OF GREECE

  Papa once went to Greece,

  And there I understand

  He saw no end of lovely spots

  About that lovely land.

  He talks about these spots of Greece

  To both Mama and me

  Yet spots of Greece upon my dress

  They can’t abear to see!

  I cannot make it out at all —

  If ever on my Frock

  They see the smallest Spot of Greece

  It gives them quite a shock!

  Henceforth, therefore — to please them both

  These spots of Greece no more

  Shall be upon my frock at all —

  Nor on my Pinafore.

  BUT AH! (THE LANDSCAPE PAINTER SAID)

  But ah! (the Landscape painter said,)

  A brutal fly walks on my head

  And my bald skin doth tickle;

  And so I stop distracted quite,

  (With itching skin for who can write?)

  In most disgusting pickle —

  IT IS A VIRTUE IN INGENUOUS YOUTH

  It is a virtue in ingenuous youth,

  To leave off lying and return to truth,

  For well it’s known that all religious morals

  Are caused by Bass’s Ale and South Atlantic Corals.

  THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO FELT PERT

  There was an old man who felt pert

  When he wore a palerose-coloured shirt.

  When they said “Is it pleasant?”

  He cried “Not at present —

  It’s a leetle to short — is my shirt!”

  THERE WAS AN OLD PERSON OF PAXO

  There was an old person of Paxo

  Which complained when the fleas bit his back so,

  But they gave him a chair

  And impelled him to swear,

  Which relieved that old person of Paxo.

  PARODY OF TENNYSON’S ‘TO EDWARD LEAR ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE’

  Delirious Bulldogs; — echoing calls

  My daughter, — green as summer grass; —

  The long supine Plebeian ass,

  The nasty crockery boring falls; —

  Tom-Moory Pathos; — all things bare, —

  With such a turket! such a hen!

  And scrambling forms of distant men,

  O! ain’t you glad you were not there!

  THE CHILDREN OF THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT

  Our mother was the Pussy-cat, our father was the Owl,

  And so we’re partly little beasts and partly little fowl,

  The brothers of our family have feathers and they hoot,

  While all the sisters dress in fur and have long tails to boot.

  We all believe that little mice,

  For food are singularly nice.

  Our mother died long years ago. She was a lovely cat

  Her tail was 5 feet long, and grey with stripes, but what of that?

  In Sila forest on the East of fair Calabria’s shore

  She tumbled from a lofty tree none ever saw her more.

  Our owly father long was ill from sorrow and surprise,

  But with the feathers of his tail he wiped his weeping eyes.

  And in the hollow of a tree in Sila’s inmost maze

  We made a happy home and there we pass our obvious days.

  From Reggian Cosenza many owls about us flit

  And bring us worldly news for which we do not care a bit.

  We watch the sun each morning rise, beyond Tarento’s strait;

  We go out before it gets too late;

  And when the evening shades begin to lengthen from the trees

  as sure as bees is bees.

  W
e wander up and down the shore

  Or tumble over head and heels, but never, never more

  Can see the far Gromboolian plains

  Or weep as we could once have wept o’er many a vanished scene:

  This is the way our father moans he is so very green.

  Our father still preserves his voice, and when he sees a star

  He often sings to that original guitar.

  The pot in which our parents took the honey in their boat,

  But all the money has been spent, beside the £5 note.

  The owls who come and bring us nows are often

  Because we take no interest in poltix of the day.)

  COLD ARE THE CRABS

  Cold are the crabs that crawl on yonder hills

  Colder the cucumbers that grow beneath,

  And colder still the brazen chops that wreathe

  The tedious gloom of philosophic pills!

  For when the tardy gloom of nectar fills

  The ample bowls of demons and of men,

  There lurks the feeble mouse, the homely hen,

  And there the porcupine with all her quills.

  Yet much remains — to weave a solemn strain

  That lingering sadly — slowly dies away,

  Daily departing with departing day.

  A pea green gamut on a distant plain

  Where wily walrusses in congress meet —

  Such such is life —

  THE SCROOBIOUS PIP

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