Down Under, Out Back, and Back When

Below is a selection of seven 19th-century Australian poems, three by Richard Rowe (1828-1879), two by Marcus Clarke (1846-1881), and two by Agnes L. Storrie (1865-1936). These are all the poems I could find for the included poets on the web tonight, and I enjoyed reading each one, thus their inclusion. Most of them are in Bertram Stevens's An Anthology of Australian Verse.


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by Richard Rowe


    Superstites Rosae


The grass is green upon her grave,
  The west wind whispers low;
"The corn is changed, come forth, come forth,
  Ere all the blossoms go!"

In vain.    Her laughing eyes are sealed,
  And cold her sunny brow;
Last year she smiled upon the flowers--
  They smile above her now!


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by Richard Rowe


    The Angel of Life


Life's Angel watched a happy child at play,
Wreathing the riches of the blushing May:
His eye was cloudless as the heavens above,
But there was pity in her look of love.

The flowers he gathered bloomed their brief bright hour,
Then rained their petals in a silent shower:
The boy looked up at her with strange surprise,
And sadder grew the pity in her eyes.


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by Richard Rowe


    Soul Ferry


High and dry upon the shingle lies the fisher's boat to-night;
From his roof-beam dankly drooping, raying phosphorescent light,
Spectral in its pale-blue splendour, hangs his heap of scaly nets,
And the fisher, lapt in slumber, surge and seine alike forgets.

Hark! there comes a sudden knocking, and the fisher starts from sleep,
As a hollow voice and ghostly bids him once more seek the deep;
Wearily across his shoulder flingeth he the ashen oar,
And upon the beach descending finds a skiff beside the shore.

'Tis not his, but he must enter--rocking on the waters dim,
Awful in their hidden presence, who are they that wait for him?
Who are they that sit so silent, as he pulleth from the land--
Nothing heard save rumbling rowlock, wave soft-breaking on the sand?

Chill adown the tossing channel blows the wailing, wand'ring breeze,
Lonely in the murky midnight, mutt'ring mournful memories,--
Summer lands where once it brooded, wrecks that widows' hearts have wrung--
Swift the dreary boat flies onwards, spray, like rain, around it flung.

On a pebbled strand it grateth, ghastly cliffs around it loom,
Thin and melancholy voices faintly murmur through the gloom;
Voices only, lipless voices, and the fisherman turns pale,
As the mother greets her children, sisters landing brothers hail.

Lightened of its unseen burden, cork-like rides the rocking bark,
Fast the fisherman flies homewards o'er the billows deep and dark;
THAT boat needs no mortal's mooring--sad at heart he seeks his bed,
For his life henceforth is clouded--he hath piloted the Dead!


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by Marcus Clarke


    The Song of Tigilau


      The song of Tigilau the brave,
            Sina's wild lover,
      Who across the heaving wave
            From Samoa came over:
Came over, Sina, at the setting moon!

      The moon shines round and bright;
            She, with her dark-eyed maidens at her side,
            Watches the rising tide.
      While balmy breathes the starry southern night,
      While languid heaves the lazy southern tide;
The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!

      The night is past, is past and gone,
            The moon sinks to the West,
            The sea-heart beats opprest,
            And Sina's passionate breast
Heaves like the sea, when the pale moon has gone,
Heaves like the passionate sea, Sina, left by the moon alone!

      Silver on silver sands, the rippling waters meet--
            Will he come soon?
      The rippling waters kiss her delicate feet,
      The rippling waters, lisping low and sweet,
            Ripple with the tide,
            The rising tide,
      The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!

      He comes!--her lover!
      Tigilau, the son of Tui Viti.
      Her maidens round her hover,
      The rising waves her white feet cover.
            O Tigilau, son of Tui Viti,
            Through the mellow dusk thy proas glide,
                  So soon!
            So soon by the rising tide,
The rising tide, my Sina, and the setting moon!

      The mooring-poles are left,
      The whitening waves are cleft,
            By the prows of Tui Viti!
            By the sharp keels of Tui Viti!
      Broad is the sea, and deep,
      The yellow Samoans sleep,
      But they will wake and weep--
    Weep in their luxurious odorous vales,
    While the land breeze swells the sails
                  Of Tui Viti!
    Tui Viti--far upon the rising tide,
                  The rising tide--
The rising tide, my Sina, beneath the setting moon!

      She leaps to meet him!
      Her mouth to greet him
            Burns at his own.
      Away!    To the canoes,
      To the yoked war canoes!
            The sea in murmurous tone
      Whispers the story of their loves,
      Re-echoes the story of their loves--
            The story of Tui Viti,
            Of Sina and Tui Viti,
            By the rising tide,
The rising tide, Sina, beneath the setting moon!

                  She has gone!
                  She has fled!
                        Sina!
Sina, for whom the warriors decked their shining hair,
Wreathing with pearls their bosoms brown and bare,
Flinging beneath her dainty feet
Mats crimson with the feathers of the parrakeet.
      Ho, Samoans! rouse your warriors full soon,
      For Sina is across the rippling wave,
            With Tigilau, the bold and brave.
      Far, far upon the rising tide!
      Far upon the rising tide!
Far upon the rising tide, Sina, beneath the setting moon.


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by Marcus Clarke


    In a Lady's Album


What can I write in thee, O dainty book,
  About whose daintiness faint perfume lingers--
Into whose pages dainty ladies look,
  And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers?

Fitter my ruder muse for ruder song,
  My scrawling quill to coarser paper matches;
My voice, in laughter raised too loud and long,
  Is hoarse and cracked with singing tavern catches.

No melodies have I for ladies’ ear,
  No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses--
But only brawlings born of bitter beer,
  And chorussed with the clink and clash of glasses!

So, tell thy mistress, pretty friend, for me,
  I cannot do her hest, for all her frowning,
While dust and ink are but polluting thee,
  And vile tobacco-smoke thy leaves embrowning.

Thou breathest purity and humble worth--
  The simple jest, the light laugh following after.
I will not jar upon thy modest mirth
  With harsher jest, or with less gentle laughter.

So, some poor tavern-haunter, steeped in wine,
  With staggering footsteps thro’ the streets returning,
Seeing, through gathering glooms, a sweet light shine
  From household lamp in happy window burning,

May pause an instant in the wind and rain
  To gaze on that sweet scene of love and duty,
But turns into the wild wet night again,
  Lest his sad presence mar its holy beauty.


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by Agnes L. Storrie


    A Confession


You did not know,--how could you, dear,--
How much you stood for?    Life in you
Retained its touch of Eden dew,
And ever through the droughtiest year
My soul could bring her flagon here
And fill it to the brim with clear
      Deep draughts of purity:
And time could never quench the flame
Of youth that lit me through your eyes,
And cozened winter from my skies
Through all the years that went and came.
You did not know I used your name
To conjure by, and still the same
      I found its potency.
You did not know that, as a phial
May garner close through dust and gloom
The essence of a rich perfume,
Romance was garnered in your smile
And touched my thoughts with beauty, while
The poor world, wise with bitter guile,
      Outlived its chivalry.
You did not know--our lives were laid
So far apart--that thus I drew
The sunshine of my days from you,
That by your joy my own was weighed
That thus my debts your sweetness paid,
And of my heart's deep silence made
      A lovely melody.


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by Agnes L. Storrie


    Twenty Gallons of Sleep


Measure me out from the fathomless tun
  That somewhere or other you keep
In your vasty cellars, O wealthy one,
  Twenty gallons of sleep.

Twenty gallons of balmy sleep,
  Dreamless, and deep, and mild,
Of the excellent brand you used to keep
  When I was a little child.

I've tasted of all your vaunted stock,
  Your clarets and ports of Spain,
The liquid gold of your famous hock,
  And your matchless dry champagne.

Of your rich muscats and your sherries fine,
  I've drunk both well and deep,
Then, measure me out, O merchant mine,
  Twenty gallons of sleep.

Twenty gallons of slumber soft
  Of the innocent, baby kind,
When the angels flutter their wings aloft
  And the pillow with down is lined;

I have drawn the corks, and drained the lees
  Of every vintage pressed,
If I've felt the sting of my honey bees
  I've taken it with the rest.

I have lived my life, and I'll not repine,
  As I sowed I was bound to reap;
Then, measure me out, O merchant mine,
  Twenty gallons of sleep.


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A Björnstjerne Björnson selection

This is the opening paragraph in the Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson entry of Wikipedia:

"Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson (Bearstar Martinus Bearson) (December 8, 1832–April 26, 1910). Norwegian writer and a 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Bjørnson is generally considered as one of "The Great Four" Norwegian writers; the others being Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland. Amongst Norwegians, Bjørnson is celebrated for his lyrics to the National Anthem: Ja, vi elsker dette landet."

In Norwegian Life (1909), Ethlyn T. Clough wrote:

"A new and grand period in Norwegian literature commenced about 1857, and the two most conspicuous names in this period--and in the whole Norwegian literature--are those of Henrik Ibsen and Björnstjerne Björnson."

She compares the two in popularity and writes this about Björnson, who would die the following year in 1910:

"Björnstjerne Björnson (born in Osterdalen, in 1832) is the more popular of the two giants of Norwegian literature of to-day. His works are more national in tone. It has been said that to mention his name is to raise the Norwegian flag. His first successes were made in the field of the novel, and the first two, Synnöve Solbakken, 1857, and Arne, 1858, made his name famous. These, and his other peasant stories, will always retain their popularity. He soon, however, entered the dramatic field, and has since published a great number of dramas and novels."

Below are eight poems selected from Poems and Songs by Björnstjerne Björnson, translated from the Norwegian, in the original meters, by Arthur Hubbell Palmer (1859-1918).


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1859


Our Country


A land there is, lying near far-northern snow,
Where only the fissures life's springtime may know.
But surging, the sea tells of great deeds done,
And loved is the land as a mother by son.

What time we were little and sat on her knee,
She gave us her saga with pictures to see.
We read till our eyes opened wide and moist,
While nodding and smiling she mute rejoiced.

We went to the fjord and in wonder beheld
The ashen-gray bauta, that record of eld;
Still older she stood and her silence kept,
While stone-studded hows all around us slept.

Our hands she then took and away o'er the hill
She led to the church ever lowly and still,
Where humbly our forefathers knelt to pray,
And mildly she taught us: "Do ye as they!"

She scattered her snow on the mountain's steep side,
Then bade on swift skis her young manhood to glide;
The North Sea she maddened with scourge of gales,
Then bade her young manhood to hoist the sails.

Of beautiful maidens she gathered a throng,
To follow our daring with smiles and with song,
While she sat enthroned with her saga's scroll
In mantle of moonlight beneath the Pole.

Then "Forward, go forward!" was borne on the wind,
"With forefathers' aim and with forefathers' mind,
For freedom, for Norsehood, for Norway, hurrah!"
While echoing mountains voiced their hurrah.

Then life-giving fountains burst forth on our sight,
Then we were baptized with her spirit of might,
Then gleamed o'er the mountains a vision high,
That summons us onward until we die.


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The Maiden on the Shore


She wandered so young on the shore around,
Her thoughts were by naught on earth now bound.
Soon came there a painter, his art he plied
                        Above the tide,
                        In shadow wide,--
He painted the shore and herself beside.

More slowly she wandered near him around,
Her thoughts by a single thing were bound.
And this was his picture wherein he drew
                        Herself so true,
                        Herself so true,
Reflected in ocean with heaven's blue.

All driven and drawn far and wide around
Her thoughts now by everything were bound.
Far over the ocean,--and yet most dear
                        The shore right here,
                        The man so near,
Did ever the sunshine so bright appear!


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The Blonde Maiden


Though she depart, a vision flitting,
    If I these thoughts in words exhale:
I love you, you blonde maiden, sitting
    Within your pure white beauty's veil.
        I love you for your blue eyes dreaming,
            Like moonlight moving over snow,
        And 'mid the far-off forests beaming
            On something hid I may not know.

I love this forehead's fair perfection
    Because it stands so starry-clear,
In flood of thought sees its reflection
    And wonders at the image near.
        I love these locks in riot risen
            Against the hair-net's busy bands;
        To free them from their pretty prison
            Their sylphs entice my eyes and hands.

I love this figure's supple swinging
    In rhythm of its bridal song,
Of strength and life-joy daily singing
    With youthful yearnings deep and long.
        I love this foot so lightly bearing
            The glory of sure victory
        Through youth's domain of merry daring
            To meet first-love that hers shall be.

I love these hands, these lips enchanting,
    With them the God of love's allied,
With them the apple-prize is granting,
    But guards them, too, lest aught betide.
        I love you and must say it ever,
            Although you heed not what you've heard,
        But flee and answer: maidens never
            May put their trust in poet's word.


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in Ringerike during the Student Meeting of 1869


Norse Nature


We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway, fair to see.
    Let sweetly the tones go twining
    In colors so softly shining
On mountain, forest, fjord, and shore,
'Neath heaven's azure arching o'er.

The warmth of the nation's heart,
The depth, the strength, its songs impart,
    Here opens its eyes to greet you,
    Rejoicing just now to meet you,
And giving, grateful for the chance,
In love a self-revealing glance.

Here wakened our history first,
Here Halfdan dreamed of greatness erst,
    In vision of hope beholding
    The kingdom's future unfolding,
And Nore stood and summons gave,
While forth to conquest called the wave.

Here singing we must unroll
Of our dear land the pictured scroll!
    Let calm turn to storm of wildness,
    Bring might into bonds of mildness:
Then Norsemen mustering, each shall see
This is our land's whole history.

To them first our way we wing,
The hundred harbors in the spring,
    Where follow fond love and yearning,
    When sea-ward the ships are turning.
For Norway's weal pure prayers exhale
From sixty thousand men that sail.

See sloping the skerried coasts,
With gulls and whales and fishing-posts,
    And vessels in shelter riding,
    While boats o'er the sea are gliding,
And nets in fjord and seines in sound,
And white with spawn the ocean's ground.

See Lofoten's tumult grand,
Where tow'ring cliffs in ocean stand,
    Whose summits the fogs are cleaving,
    Beneath them the surges heaving,
And all is darkness, mystery, dread,
But 'mid the tumult sails are spread.

Here ships of the Arctic sea;
Through snow and gloom their course must be;
    Commands from the masthead falling
    The boats toward the ice are calling;
And shot on shot and seal on seal,
And souls and bodies strong as steel.

On mountains we now shall guest,
When eventide to all brings rest,
    In dairy on highland meadow,
    On hay-field 'neath slanting shadow,
While to the alphorn's tender tone
Great Nature's voice responds alone.

But quickly we must away,
If all the land we would survey,--
    The mines of our metal treasures,
    The hills of our hunters' pleasures,
The foam-white river's rush and noise,
The timber-driver's foot-sure poise.

Returning, we linger here,
These valleys broad to us are dear,
    Whose men in their faithful living
    To Norway are honor giving;
Their fathers, strong in brain and brawn,
Lent luster to our morning-dawn.

We wander and sing with glee
Of glorious Norway fair to see.
    Our present to labor binds us,
    Each how of the past reminds us,
Our future shall be sure and bright,
As God we trust and do the right.


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at a summer-fête for him in Christiania, 1871


To Hans Christian Andersen


We welcome you this wondrous summer-day,
When childhood's dreams on earth are streaming,
To bloom and sing, to brighten and to pale;
                      A fairy-tale,
A fairy-tale, our Northland all is seeming,
And holds you in its arms a festal space
With grateful glee and whisperings face to face.
                      Th' angelic noise,
                      Sweet strains of children's joys,
Bears you a moment to that home
Whence all our dreams, whence all our dreams have come.

We welcome you! Our nation all is young,
Still in that age of dreams enthralling,
When greatest things in fairy-tales are nursed,
                      And he is first,
And he is first, who hears his Lord's high calling.
Of childhood's longings you the meaning know,
And to the North a goal of greatness show.
                      Your fantasy
                      Has just that path made free,
Where, past the small things that you hate,
We yet shall find, we yet shall find the great.


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Workmen's March


Left foot! Right foot! Lines unbroken!
Keeping time is power's token.
That makes one of many, many,
That makes bold, if fear daunts any,
That makes small the load and lighter,
That makes near the goal and brighter,
Till it greets us gained with laughter,
And we seek the next one after.

Left foot! Right foot! Lines unbroken!
Keeping time is power's token.
Marching, marching of few hundreds,
No one heeds it, never one dreads;
Marching, marching of few thousands,
Here and there wakes some to hearing;
Marching, marching hundred thousands,--
All will mark that thunder nearing.

Left foot! Right foot! Lines unbroken!
Keeping time is power's token.
Let us march all, never weaken
Time from Vardö down to Viken,
Vinger up to Bergen's region,--
Let us make one marching legion,
Then we'll rout some wrong from Norway,
Open wide to right the doorway.


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Norway, Norway


                      Norway, Norway,
Rising in blue from the sea's gray and green,
Islands around like fledglings tender,
Fjord-tongues with slender,
Tapering tips in the silence seen.
                      Rivers, valleys,
Mate among mountains, wood-ridge and slope
Wandering follow. Where the wastes lighten,
Lake and plain brighten
Hallow a temple of peace and hope.
                      Norway, Norway,
Houses and huts, not castles grand,
                      Gentle or hard,
                      Thee we guard, thee we guard,
Thee, our future's fair land.

                      Norway, Norway,
Glistening heights where skis swiftly go,
Harbors with fishermen, salts, and craftsmen,
Rivers and raftsmen,
Herdsmen and horns and the glacier-glow.
                      Moors and meadows,
Runes in the woodlands, and wide-mown swaths,
Cities like flowers, streams that run dashing
Out to the flashing
White of the sea, where the fish-school froths.
                      Norway, Norway,
Houses and huts, not castles grand,
                      Gentle or hard,
                      Thee we guard, thee we guard,
Thee, our future's fair land.


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In the Forest

List to the forest-voice murmuring low:
All that it saw when alone with its laughter,
All that it suffered in times that came after,
Mournful it tells, that the wind may know.


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Poetry of Peace in the Nobel Lectures at Oslo City Hall

Oslo City Hall--
where the Nobel Peace Prize lectures are delivered.


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Below are excerpts from the Nobel lectures of 16 Peace prize winners. Each excerpt contains a thought of poetry in relation to peace. They are in chronological order, by Peace Prize winner.


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Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (1907)


from his Nobel Lecture: Peace and Law in the Italian Tradition:


Your choice was all the more pleasing to my fellow countrymen in coming from a country we have loved for a very long time for its devotion to truth and beauty, for its civic institutions, and for its poets and dramatists, such as Ibsen and Bjørnson who are among the most admired and most widely read in Italy.


_____


Our revolution did not explode in a sudden uprising of people intolerant of a tyrannical regime; it was the result of a long period of intellectual and moral evolution, brought about by men of great talent and of rare spiritual qualities, poets and philosophers, true educators of the people. In speaking of liberty and patriotism, all of them taught that liberty may be won by risking death, but it is preserved only by adherence to the principles of justice and through acts of civic virtue.


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Histories of ancient Rome, such as those by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are full of accounts of popular protests and of episodes concerning the way in which the common people of Rome resisted the war-mongering and conquering policies of the Senate; it was, indeed, the Latin poets and philosophers who called war "horrida bella" or "bella matribus detestata".


_____


Although in the realm of ethics Cicero was far ahead of his time, he was not alone in propounding such ideas. The Epicurean poet Lucretius, in his poem about the Roman world, marked the contrast of its internal strife and the horrors of its wars with the placid tranquillity of the sage who, from the heights of the austere temple of knowledge, contemplates the senseless conflicts of men. And when Augustus brought these conflicts to an end, there was a host of high-minded individuals, such as Vergil, Horace, Pliny, Seneca, and all the Stoics, who extolled the peace.


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Dante saw the danger and the pity of this division into jealous and antagonistic city states. In his poem, attacking parties, he says in an immortal line that Italy, "no longer the mistress of provinces," has become the slave of cruel and pitiless sects.

This masterpiece in which Dante sets forth the fundamentals of his doctrine can be said, if one discards the now obsolete part which was adapted to his own day and to the metaphysics of Aristotle, to present the rules of government and of humanitarian life under one law; to this end, he wanted the Empire transferred to Rome, for he perceived in the Romans those qualities most suited to governing the world.

The purpose of civilization, he said, is to put man's intellectual potential to practical use, in short, to develop his faculties to their fullest extent.


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The orator of the "Mille" himself, the poet Abba, in the presence of the King at Rome, commemorated that great event by expressing the thought which was then and still is uppermost in the minds both of the people and of the government; he closed his speech by saying that Italy had risen again to accomplish the mission of peace with which history and her position in Europe had charged her. It is now known, even outside Italy, that there is no longer in our country any party agitating for war.


_____


Consider the way that poets, with few exceptions, pay court to fame and popularity by singing the praises of war and massacre. Consider again how the most sublime virtues are always associated with the national flag while cruelty is ascribed to the enemy alone--this in order to sustain mistrust, hatred, and enmity between nations.


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Christian Lange (1921)


from his Nobel Lecture: Internationalism:


The past dies hard because the contemporary political organizations or holders of power seldom bend themselves willingly to the needs of the new age, and because past glories and traditions generally become transformed into poetic or religious symbols, emotional images, which must be repudiated by the practical and prosaic demands of the new age. Within each such social group, a feeling of solidarity prevails, a compelling need to work together and a joy in doing so that represent a high moral value.


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Gustav Stresemann (1926)


from his Nobel Lecture: The New Germany:


I tried to make the point that the man who cultivates to the highest degree the qualities inherent in his national culture will gain insight into universal knowledge and feeling which transcend the limitations of his own heritage; and he will create works which, like cathedrals, although built upon the soil of his native land, will soar into the heaven of all mankind. A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind. Dante can be understood only within the context of Italian thought, and Faust would be unthinkable if divorced from its German background; but both are part of our common cultural heritage. They break the bonds which bind them to their own nations, yet they are great only because their inspiration is so firmly rooted in their own countries.


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Emily Greene Balch (1946)


from her Nobel Lecture: Toward Human Unity or Beyond Nationalism:


If UNESCO succeeds, as it well may, in securing the general adoption of a universal auxiliary language, such as the International Language Association is now engaged in selecting and elaborating, it will be the dawn of a new day in literature such as the world has hardly dreamed of. None of the natural languages will be tampered with, reformed, or cut down to a restricted base. But all men who can read and write may command an idiom universally understood. This will not only be an enormous advantage in business, in travel, and in all sorts of practical ways. Far more important will be its service in the world of ideas. Poets and the great writers will have open to them a reading public including not only all European and American peoples but the Chinese, the Arabs, the island peoples, and the people of Africa, who may yet make a great contribution. Music and mathematics already command a universal notation not yet available for the expression of thought. Such a public for the printed and spoken word, comparable to that for music, would give an immense impetus to world literature.


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Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1954)


from Nobel Lecture: Refugee Problems and Their Solutions
by Dr. Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart:


Alfred Nobel was a lonely man, or, in a sense, a "displaced person", a "homeless foreigner". He was by birth and passport a Swede, but in his later days he spoke not so much his mother tongue, of which he had an unusual command, but mostly English, a language in which he wrote remarkably beautiful poetry. Whereas we may be inclined to combine Nobel's name with the image of a hardboiled businessman, an extremely successful money-maker, Alfred Nobel was in reality a poet, a dreamer, an adventurer in science, an idealist at heart, a philosopher in essence--he did, in fact, leave a sketch for a novel in which he advocated a form of government along Platonic lines.


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In my office in Geneva I have hanging on the wall, written by a hand quite unaccustomed to writing, a short German poem which my father found in a caravan of gypsies whom he visited when they passed our little Dutch village many years ago:

        Der Mensch braucht ein Plätzchen
        Und wär's noch so klein
        Von dem er kann sagen:
        Siehe hier das ist mein,
        Hier lebe ich, hier liebe ich,
        Hier ruhe ich aus,
        Hier ist meine Heimat,
        Hier bin ich zu Haus.

How wholeheartedly would the lonely man, at the villa "Mio Nido", have agreed to that! A man needs a little place, small as it may be, of which he can say: "This is mine. Here I live, here I love, here I find my rest. This is my fatherland, this is my home!"


_____



Lester Bowles Pearson (1957)


from his Nobel Lecture: The Four Faces of Peace:


I would like, at the very beginning, to pay my tribute to the memory of a great man, Alfred Nobel, who made this award--and others--possible. Seldom in history has any man combined so well the qualities of idealism and realism as he did--those of the poet and the practical man of business. We know all about his dynamite and his explosives and how he lamented the use to which they would be put. Yet ideas can also be explosive, and he had many that were good and were deeply concerned with peace and war. He liked to write and talk about the "rights of man and universal brotherhood", and no one worked harder or more unselfishly to realize those ideals, still so far away.


_____



Albert Lutuli (1960)


from his Nobel Lecture: Africa and Freedom:


The address could do no more than pose some questions and leave it to the African leaders and peoples to provide satisfying answers and responses by their concern for higher values and by their noble actions that could be

        Footprints on the sands of time.
        Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
        A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

        [from "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]


_____



Martin Luther King (1964)


from his Nobel Lecture: The Quest for Peace and Justice:


Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man.


_____


In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers' keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne interpreted this truth in graphic terms when he affirmed:

        No man is an Iland, intire of its selfe: every
        man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the
        maine: if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
        Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie
        were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends
        or of thine owne were: any mans death
        diminishes me, because I am involved in
        Mankinde: and therefore never send to know
        for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.


_____



René Cassin (1968)


from his Nobel Lecture: The Charter of Human Rights:


It is with great feeling that I take my leave of this country where peace and law are so highly esteemed. So perhaps you will permit a French citizen committed to the service of peace and law to recall, as indicative of faith in mankind, these two lines from a French poet who received one of the first prizes, the Nobel Prize in Literature:

        My country imbues me with a love that overflows its borders,
        And the more French I am, the more I feel a part of mankind19.

        [by Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907)]


_____



Betty Williams (1976)


from her Nobel Lecture:


Someday we must take seriously the words of Carl Sandburg: "Someday there will be a war, and no one will come". Won't that be beautiful? Someday there will be a "war" but no one will come. And of course, if no one comes there will be no war. And we don't have to go, we don't have to have war, but it seems to take more courage to say NO to war than to say YES, and perhaps we women have for too long encouraged the idea that it is brave and manly to go to war, often to "defend" women and children. Let women everywhere from this day on encourage men to have the courage not to turn up for war, not to work for a militarized world but a world of peace, a nonviolent world.


_____



Amnesty International (1977)


from Nobel Lecture:


The victims of arbitrary arrest and detention come from all walks of life: workers, peasants, lawyers, journalists, professors. Among them also are the voices of the human imagination, painters, actors and actresses, film-makers and dancers, musicians, poets.


_____


Some time ago, one of them, now dead, was able to send a letter from prison in which she wrote:

        "They are envious of us. They will
        envy us all.

        For it is an enviable but very difficult
        task to live through a history as a human
        being, to complete a life as a human being.

        Soon the night will fall and they will
        close the doors of the cell.

        I feel lonely.

        No . . . I am with the whole of mankind.

        And the whole of mankind is with me".


_____



Elie Wiesel (1986)


from his Nobel Lecture: Hope, Despair and Memory:


And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning. All those doctors of law or medicine or theology, all those lovers of art and poetry, of Bach and Goethe, who coldly, deliberately ordered the massacres and participated in them. What did their metamorphosis signify? Could anything explain their loss of ethical, cultural and religious memory? How could we ever understand the passivity of the onlookers and--yes--the silence of the Allies?


_____


The great historian Shimon Dubnov served as our guide and inspiration. Until the moment of his death he said over and over again to his companions in the Riga ghetto: "Yidden, shreibt un fershreibt" (Jews, write it all down). His words were heeded. Overnight, countless victims become chroniclers and historians in the ghettos, even in the death camps. Even members of the Sonderkommandos, those inmates forced to burn their fellow inmates' corpses before being burned in turn, left behind extraordinary documents. To testify became an obsession. They left us poems and letters, diaries and fragments of novels, some known throughout the world, others still unpublished.

After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to read the world a poem written by a child in the Theresienstadt ghetto to ensure that no child anywhere would ever again have to endure hunger or fear. It would be enough to describe a death-camp "Selection", to prevent the human right to dignity from ever being violated again.


_____



Oscar Arias Sánchez (1987)


from his Nobel Lecture: Only Peace Can Write the New History:


Poets who are the pride of mankind know that millions upon millions cannot read them in their own countries, because so many of the men and women there are illiterate. There are on this narrow strip of land painters and sculptors whom we shall admire for ever, but also dictators whom we have no wish to remember because they offend most cherished human values.


_____


I say to the poet
The peace plan which we five presidents signed accepts all the challenges. The path to peace is difficult, very difficult. We in Central America need everyone's help to achieve peace.

It is easier to predict the defeat of peace in Central America than its victory. That is how it was when man wanted to fly, and when he wanted to conquer space. That is how it was in the hard days of the two world wars which our century has known. That is how it was and still is as man confronts the most dreadful diseases and the task eliminating poverty and hunger in the world.

History was not written by men who predicted failure, who gave up their dreams, who abandoned their principles, who allowed their laziness to put their intelligence to sleep. If certain men at times were alone in seeking victory, they always had at their side the watchful spirit of their peoples, the faith and destiny of many generations.

Perhaps it was in difficult times for Central America, like those we are living through today, perhaps it was in premonition of the present crossroads, that Rubén Dario, our America's greatest poet, wrote these lines, convinced that history would take its course:

        "Pray, generous, pious and proud;
        pray, chaste, pure, heavenly and brave;
        intercede for us, entreat for us,
        for already we are almost without sap or shoot,
        without soul, without life, without light, without Quixote,
        without feet and without wings, without Sancho and without God".

I assure the immortal poet that we shall not cease to dream, we shall not fear wisdom, we shall not flee from freedom. To the eternal poet I say that in Central America we shall not forget Quixote, we shall not renounce life, we shall not turn our backs on the spirit, and we shall never lose our faith in God.

I am one of those five men who signed an accord, a commitment which consists, very largely, in the fact of desiring peace with all one's soul.

Thank you.


_____



F.W. de Klerk (1993)


from his Nobel Lecture:


One of the great poets in Afrikaans, N P van Wyk Louw, wrote:

        "O wye en droewe land, alleen
        onder die groot suidersterre.
        Sal nooit'n hoe blydskap kom
        deur jou stil droefenis? ...

        Sal nooit'n magtige skoonheid kom
        oor jou soos die haelwit somerwolk
        wat uitbloei oor jou donker berge,
        en nooit in jou'n daad geskied
        wat opklink oor die aarde en
        die jare in hul onmag terge;..."

Translated freely it means:

        "Oh wide and woeful land, alone
        Beneath the great south stars.
        Will soaring joy ne'er rise above
        Your silent grief?

        Will ne'er a mighty beauty rise
        above you, like the hail-white summer clouds
        that billow o'er your brooding peaks
        and in you, ne'er a deed be wrought
        that over the earth resounds
        and mocks the ages in their impotence?"

What is taking place in South Africa is such a deed--a deed resounding over the earth--a deed of peace. It brings hope to all South Africans. It opens new horizons for Sub-Saharan Africa. It has the capacity to unlock the tremendous potential of our country and our region.


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Yitzhak Rabin (1994)


from his Nobel Lecture:


"God takes pity on kindergarteners", wrote the poet Yehudah Amichai, who is here with us tonight,

        "God takes pity on kindergarteners,
        Less so on schoolchildren,
        And will no longer pity their elders,
        Leaving them to their own.
        And sometimes they will have to crawl on all fours
        Through the burning sand
        To reach the casualty station
        Bleeding."

For decades God has not taken pity on the kindergarteners in the Middle East, or the schoolchildren, or their elders. There has been no pity in the Middle East for generations.


_____


I am the emissary of the poets and of those who dreamed of an end to war, like the Prophet Isaiah.

_____



John Hume (1998)


from his Nobel Lecture:


The Irish poet, Louis MacNiece wrote words of affirmation and hope that seem to me to sum up the challenges now facing all of us--North and South, Unionist and Nationalist--in Ireland.

"By a high star our course is set, Our end is life. Put out to sea."

That is the journey on which we in Ireland are now embarked.


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The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo


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How many of these online poets here in the Arctic can you name?

(Click to enlarge/Suitable for framing)

Trot Trot to Boston to Loft Off to Lofoten

Tomorrow (Wednesday) night, my daughter drives me into Logan Airport in Boston. I'll be catching a flight to Keflavik International Airport in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a layover while waiting for my flight to Oslo (Christiania to you old Ibsen contemporaries).




Here are the blogs of the people I love, who I will be meeting there with their significant others, also great friends of mine:

        Aisha, our host

        Helmuth Filipowitsch

        Peter Garner

        Paula Grenside

        Carol Saba

I am heartbroken to find out today that Judy Lewis and her husband Ernest will not be able to make it.

Those blogs are rich with creativity and poetry, and will probably be better updated than this one for the next two weeks, about our trip with pictures and all. Check them out to see if some excellent poetry gets written. That's what they do.

After two days in Oslo, we fly up to Bodo, into the Arctic Circle (defined by midnight sun), and take a ferry to Lofoten, where we will be for 5 days.




Here is a great link to where we will be:

        Lofoten Islands

If you want to check out some pictures on the web, here is the image search:

        Google Lofoten images.





by Henrik Ibsen in 1864


translated by Fydell Edmund Garrett in 1912


Gone


He last, late guest
To the gate we followed;
Goodbye--and the rest
The night-wind swallowed.

House, garden, street,
Lay tenfold gloomy,
Where accents sweet
Had made music to me.

It was but a feast
With the dark coming on;
She was but a guest--
And now, she is gone.

Confucius on China's Ancient Anthology of Poetry

The below excerpts are Confucius's references to the Shih Ching anthology, or the ancient Book of Poetry, in his Analects (here translated by James Legge).

Confucius, or K'ung Fu-Tzu lived around the year 500 BC in China. The Shih Ching--like the I Ching or Book of Changes, Shu Ching or Book of History, and Li Chi or Book of Rites--predates him.








_____________________


Book I: Hsio R

          Chapter XV

Tsze-kung said, 'What do you pronounce concerning the poor man who yet does not flatter, and the rich man who is not proud?' The Master replied, 'They will do; but they are not equal to him, who, though poor, is yet cheerful, and to him, who, though rich, loves the rules of propriety.'

Tsze-kung replied, 'It is said in the Book of Poetry, "As you cut and then file, as you carve and then polish."--The meaning is the same, I apprehend, as that which you have just expressed.'

The Master said, 'With one like Ts'ze, I can begin to talk about the odes. I told him one point, and he knew its proper sequence.'


_____________________


Book II: Wei Chang

          Chapter II

The Master said, 'In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of them all may be embraced in one sentence-- "Having no depraved thoughts."'


_____________________



Book XVII: Yang Ho


          Chapter IX

The Master said, 'My children, why do you not study the Book of Poetry?

          'The Odes serve to stimulate the mind.
          'They may be used for purposes of self-contemplation.
          'They teach the art of sociability.
          'They show how to regulate feelings of resentment.
          'From them you learn the more immediate duty of serving one's father, and the remoter one of serving one's prince.
          'From them we become largely acquainted with the names of birds, beasts, and plants.'


_____________________





_____________________

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) on Poetry (Whoever the Heck He Was)

The below excerpts are from Essays of Schopenhauer: Translated by Mrs. Rudolf Dircks, or Sara Hay (Goddard) Dircks.


__________________________________

It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works; nay, finally, it finds these more interesting than the works themselves; it reads more about Goethe than what has been written by Goethe, and industriously studies the legend of Faust in preference to Goethe's Faust itself. And when Bürger said that "people would make learned expositions as to who Leonora really was," we see this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case, for we now have many learned expositions on Faust and the Faust legend. They are and will remain of a purely material character. This preference for matter to form is the same as a man ignoring the shape and painting of a fine Etruscan vase in order to make a chemical examination of the clay and colours of which it is made. The attempt to be effective by means of the matter used, thereby ministering to this evil propensity of the public, is absolutely to be censured in branches of writing where the merit must lie expressly in the form; as, for instance, in poetical writing.

        from On Authorship and Style


__________________________________



Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer's mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself. For instance, what declamation on the emptiness of human existence could be more impressive than Job's: Homo, natus de muliere, brevi vivit tempore, repletus multis miseriis, qui, tanquam flos, egreditur et conteritur, et fugit velut umbra. It is for this very reason that the naïve poetry of Goethe is so incomparably greater than the rhetorical of Schiller. This is also why many folk-songs have so great an effect upon us. An author should guard against using all unnecessary rhetorical adornment, all useless amplification, and in general, just as in architecture he should guard against an excess of decoration, all superfluity of expression--in other words, he must aim at chastity of style. Everything that is redundant has a harmful effect. The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

        from On Authorship and Style


__________________________________


Kant has written a treatise on The Vital Powers; but I should like to write a dirge on them, since their lavish use in the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things about has made the whole of my life a daily torment. Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at this, because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues.

        from On Noise


__________________________________


Literary newspapers, since they print the daily smatterings of commonplace people, are especially a cunning means for robbing from the aesthetic public the time which should be devoted to the genuine productions of art for the furtherance of culture.

Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of not reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time--such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.

        from On Reading and Books


__________________________________


There are at all times two literatures which, although scarcely known to each other, progress side by side--the one real, the other merely apparent. The former grows into literature that lasts. Pursued by people who live for science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and quietly, but extremely slowly; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century, which, however, are permanent. The other literature is pursued by people who live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop amid a great noise and shouting of those taking part, and brings yearly many thousand works into the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they? where is their fame, which was so great formerly? This class of literature may be distinguished as fleeting, the other as permanent.

        from On Reading and Books


__________________________________


We are accustomed to see poets principally occupied with describing the love of the sexes. This, as a rule, is the leading idea of every dramatic work, be it tragic or comic, romantic or classic, Indian or European. It in no less degree constitutes the greater part of both lyric and epic poetry, especially if in these we include the host of romances which have been produced every year for centuries in every civilised country in Europe as regularly as the fruits of the earth. All these works are nothing more than many-sided, short, or long descriptions of the passion in question. Moreover, the most successful delineations of love, such, for example, as Romeo and Juliet, La Nouvelle Héloise, and Werther, have attained immortal fame.

Rochefoucauld says that love may be compared to a ghost since it is something we talk about but have never seen, and Lichtenberg, in his essay Ueber die Macht der Liebe, disputes and denies its reality and naturalness--but both are in the wrong. For if it were foreign to and contradicted human nature--in other words, if it were merely an imaginary caricature, it would not have been depicted with such zeal by the poets of all ages, or accepted by mankind with an unaltered interest; for anything artistically beautiful cannot exist without truth.

        from Metaphysics of Love


__________________________________


All the love-affairs of the present generation taken altogether are accordingly the meditatio compositionis generationis futurae, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes of mankind. Love is of such high import, because it has nothing to do with the weal or woe of the present individual, as every other matter has; it has to secure the existence and special nature of the human race in future times; hence the will of the individual appears in a higher aspect as the will of the species; and this it is that gives a pathetic and sublime import to love-affairs, and makes their raptures and troubles transcendent, emotions which poets for centuries have not tired of depicting in a variety of ways.

        from Metaphysics of Love


__________________________________


Real, passionate love is as rare as the meeting of two people exactly fitted for each other. By the way, it is because there is a possibility of real passionate love in us all that we understand why poets have depicted it in their works.

        from Metaphysics of Love


__________________________________


The yearning of love, the [Greek: himeros], which has been expressed in countless ways and forms by the poets of all ages, without their exhausting the subject or even doing it justice; this longing which makes us imagine that the possession of a certain woman will bring interminable happiness, and the loss of her, unspeakable pain; this longing and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the spirit of the species, discerning irreparable means of either gaining or losing its ends. It is the species alone that has an interminable existence: hence it is capable of endless desire, endless gratification, and endless pain. These, however, are imprisoned in the heart of a mortal; no wonder, therefore, if it seems like to burst, and can find no expression for the announcements of endless joy or endless pain. This it is that forms the substance of all erotic poetry that is sublime in character, which, consequently, soars into transcendent metaphors, surpassing everything earthly. This is the theme of Petrarch, the material for the St. Preuxs, Werthers, and Jacopo Ortis, who otherwise could be neither understood nor explained. This infinite regard is not based on any kind of intellectual, nor, in general, upon any real merits of the beloved one; because the lover frequently does not know her well enough; as was the case with Petrarch.

        from Metaphysics of Love


__________________________________


In fact, it is possible for a lover to clearly recognise and be bitterly conscious of horrid defects in his fiancée's disposition and character--defects which promise him a life of misery--and yet for him not to be filled with fear:

    "I ask not, I care not,
        If guilt's in thy heart;
    I know that I love thee,
        Whatever thou art."

For, in truth, he is not acting in his own interest but in that of a third person, who has yet to come into existence, albeit he is under the impression that he is acting in his own But it is this very acting in some one else's interest which is everywhere the stamp of greatness and gives to passionate love the touch of the sublime, making it a worthy subject for the poet.

        from Metaphysics of Love


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The Happiness of Species by Means of Poetic Selection

No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens' 'Illustrations of British Insects,' the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, Esq."


That quote, and the below excerpt is from The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.


_________________________________


I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily--against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better.

This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.





_________________________________

Sousa Marches In Where Mozart Fears to Fiddle

from The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)



written November 8, 1777


translated by Lady Grace Wallace


My very dearest papa,--I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet. I cannot make fine artistic phrases that cast light and shadow, for I am no painter; I can neither by signs nor by pantomime express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer; but I can by tones, for I am a musician. So to-morrow, at Cannabich's, I intend to play my congratulations both for your name-day and birthday. Mon tres-cher pere, I can only on this day wish for you, what from my whole heart I wish for you every day and every night--health, long life, and a cheerful spirit. I would fain hope, too, that you have now less annoyance than when I was in Salzburg; for I must admit that I was the chief cause of this. They treated me badly, which I did not deserve, and you naturally took my part, only too lovingly. I can tell you this was indeed one of the principal and most urgent reasons for my leaving Salzburg in such haste. I hope, therefore, that my wish is fulfilled. I must now close by a musical congratulation. I wish that you may live as many years as must elapse before no more new music can be composed. Farewell! I earnestly beg you to go on loving me a little, and, in the mean time, to excuse these very poor congratulations till I open new shelves in my small and confined knowledge-box, where I can stow away the good sense which I have every intention to acquire.


_________________________





                by John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)


                published in 1907


                The Feast of the Monkeys


                In days of old,
                So I've been told,
                The monkeys gave a feast.
                They sent out cards,
                With kind regards,
                To every bird and beast.
                The guests came dressed,
                In fashion's best,
                Unmindful of expense;
                Except the whale,
                Whose swallowtail,
                Was "soaked" for fifty cents.

                The guests checked wraps,
                Canes, hats and caps;
                And when that task was done,
                The footman he
                With dignitee,
                Announced them one by one.
                In Monkey Hall,
                The host met all,
                And hoped they'd feel at ease,
                "I scarcely can,"
                Said the Black and Tan,
                "I'm busy hunting fleas."

                "While waiting for
                A score or more
                Of guests," the hostess said,
                "We'll have the Poodle
                Sing Yankee Doodle,
                A-standing on his head.
                And when this through,
                Good Parrot, you,
                Please show them how you swear."
                "Oh, dear; don't cuss,"
                Cried the Octopus,
                And he walked off on his ear.

                The Orang-Outang
                A sea-song sang,
                About a Chimpanzee
                Who went abroad,
                In a drinking gourd,
                To the coast of Barberee.
                Where he heard one night,
                When the moon shone bright,
                A school of mermaids pick
                Chromatic scales
                From off their tails,
                And did it mighty slick.

                "All guests are here,
                To eat the cheer,
                And dinner's served, my Lord."
                The butler bowed;
                And then the crowd
                Rushed in with one accord.
                The fiddler-crab
                Came in a cab,
                And played a piece in C;
                While on his horn,
                The Unicorn
                Blew, You'll Remember Me.

                "To give a touch
                Of early Dutch
                To this great feast of feasts,
                I'll drink ten drops
                Of Holland's schnapps,"
                Spoke out the King of Beasts.
                "That must taste fine,"
                Said the Porcupine,
                "Did you see him smack his lip?"
                "I'd smack mine, too,"
                Cried the Kangaroo,
                "If I didn't have the pip."

                The Lion stood,
                And said: "Be good
                Enough to look this way;
                Court Etiquette
                Do not forget,
                And mark well what I say:
                My royal wish
                Is ev'ry dish
                Be tasted first by me."
                "Here's where I smile,"
                Said the Crocodile,
                And he climbed an axle-tree.

                The soup was brought,
                And quick as thought,
                The Lion ate it all.
                "You can't beat that,"
                Exclaimed the Cat,
                "For monumental gall."
                "The soup," all cried.
                "Gone," Leo replied,
                "'Twas just a bit too thick."
                "When we get through,"
                Remarked the Gnu,
                "I'll hit him with a brick."

                The Tiger stepped,
                Or, rather, crept,
                Up where the Lion sat.
                "O, mighty boss
                I'm at a loss
                To know where I am at.
                I came to-night
                With appetite
                To drink and also eat;
                As a Tiger grand,
                I now demand,
                I get there with both feet."

                The Lion got
                All-fired hot
                And in a passion flew.
                "Get out," he cried,
                "And save your hide,
                You most offensive You."
                "I'm not afraid,"
                The Tiger said,
                "I know what I'm about."
                But the Lion's paw
                Reached the Tiger's jaw,
                And he was good and out.

                The salt-sea smell
                Of Mackerel,
                Upon the air arose;
                Each hungry guest
                Great joy expressed,
                And "sniff!" went every nose.
                With glutton look
                The Lion took
                The spiced and sav'ry dish.
                Without a pause
                He worked his jaws,
                And gobbled all the fish.

                Then ate the roast,
                The quail on toast,
                The pork, both fat and lean;
                The jam and lamb,
                The potted ham,
                And drank the kerosene.
                He raised his voice:
                "Come, all rejoice,
                You've seen your monarch dine."
                "Never again,"
                Clucked the Hen,
                And all sang Old Lang Syne.




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