The Spectator 'Jubilee Lines' by 21st May
 

I thought you might find it useful to see the chronological list of Poets Laureate for this comp: how public-spirited is that, then? :)

John Dryden (1631-1700)
Thomas Shadwell (1642-1692)
Nahum Tate (1652-1715)
Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718)
Laurence Eusden (1688-1730)
Colley Cibber (1671-1757)
William Whitehead (1715-1785)
Thomas Wharton (1728-1790)
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
John Masefield (1878-1967)
Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972)
Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Andrew Motion (1952- )
Carol Ann Duffy (1955- )

Jayne

From Lucy Vickery:

No. 2749: Jubilee lines
You are invited to submit a poem, written by a poet laureate from the past, to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 21 May (the shorter deadline is because of a Jubilee double issue).

Fun to see how many are not much read these days.

But christ, do you wonder? I believe Colley Cibber & Alfred Austin tie for the role of Most Crap Laureate.

On the plus side, they've managed four great laureates in four hundred years (two of them back-to-back).

And a bunch of them (Cibber, Shadwell, Southey) spurred great parodies.
And may again.

I can only assume that you have never read any Laurence Eusden.

John Dryden remains the only Laureate ever to have been dismissed from the post - now that would be a distinction worth emulating.

Interesting how many of them were really good.
Also their longevity, considering how short-live poets are, as a whole.

Christopher,

Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever read any Laurence Eusden, at least, not that I recall - or Nahum Tate. The names don't instantly spring to (my) mind.

I posted the list there to help with the comp, but it strikes me that the poets laureate would be a good topic for a thread about which ones were good and which ones were crap. It's probably been done already; is there anything that hasn't?

Back to the competition... it'll be interesting to see which laureate proves to be the most popular choice. Betcha it's Betjeman.

Jayne

But you must have SUNG Nahum Tate - "As pants the hart...", "While shepherds watched..." or, how about this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOAD6cvQc7Y

Though I confess I prefer Janet Baker's version...

Jayne:

Nahum Tate is one of my absolute favourites: I use his story in workshops all the time.

If you look closely at the history of Pope's Dunciad, Nahum Tate slowly becomes less prominent in the text as the poem is progressively revised. There are just a few hints in Pope's letters (nothing definite of course) that Pope may have realised that Tate was just a very awful poet, and might perhaps have decided to go easy on him.

Too bad to even be in the Dunciad? How sad must that make you feel?

And nearly everything Tate wrote was absolutely execrable (how else do you become a darling of the establishment?). Tate had sixty odd years to write poems which were even worse than Thomas Shadwell's.

Only, buried in among all the rest of Nahum Tate's dreck, you find As Pants the Hart, Silent Night, and the libretto of Dido and Aeneas.

Sixty years of being the worst poet in Europe, and the only consolation is writing the most beautiful Christmas Carol in English, and the first truly great English opera.

I'd settle for that.

I think most of us would.

......

(I also have a soft spot for Shadwell - though not as a poet).

They did name a station after Eusden I believe. And name an art gallery after Nahum Tate. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/...a0fc7145_o.gif

I take it the task is to submit a Jubilee poem by one of the Poet Laureates and not to write a poem in the manner of the particular poet? Is that correct?

Best regards

Chris

No, Chris. This is a writing competition. You're supposed to write your own poem, not send in other people's poems.

I fear this may be one an American can't get a handle on (or at least this American) but I gave it a whirl so I might as well post it, such as it is:


WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That stretched across the British Isles
Then kept on stretching o'er the sea
And stretched for several thousand miles.

It covered more than half the earth,
This cloud I wandered lonely as,
And now I have by dint of birth
A claim no other monarch has:

Sixty years upon the throne,
The throne my royal backside fills!
In pensive mood, when I'm alone,
I mutter, "Bugger daffodils!"

Hi Roger

Thanks for the word on the nature of the call for Jubilee poems at The Spectator. I enjoyed your Wordsworth poem. However, I feel it depends too much on the old heard-before joke that the throne that the monarch sits upon equates to the ceramic "throne" in the toilet. I'd hazard a guess that a number of bards will try to pull at one. Too obvious, Roger. :rolleyes:

Best regards

Chris

Thanks, Chris. I wasn't aware my poem invoked the ceramic throne at all, but maybe the trope is so familiar that people will inevitably read it that way.

Hi Roger

With due respect, you don't think that the line "The throne my royal backside fills!" directly invokes that comparison?

Cheers

Chris http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/...f7f5973d_o.gif

I think you're OK with the throne, Roger, people (common folk, that is) do say "on the throne" meaning perched on the porcelain, but the Queen wouldn't. As one of her ancestors was fond of saying "Honi soit qui mal y pense"!

But I do think that "sure" in the last line is a bit Transatlantic for her. "Bugger daffodils" might be rather fun - again there are family precedents in the last words of her grandad.

I agree, Anne. "Sure beats" doesn't sound very queenly.

And I have to say that on reading Roger's piece (which I enjoyed), the lavatory connotation didn't even occur to me. Maybe I have royal blood somewhere along the line?

Jayne, Laurence Eusden made it to The Stuffed Owl with four lines.

Hail, might Monarch! whom desert alone
Would, without birthright, raise up to the throne;
Thy virtues shine particularly nice,
Ungloom'd with a confinity to vice.

I hope George the Second was duly appreciative. Eusden did write, pre-Laureateship, a slightly gamey satire on women, which I've not so far tracked down.

Thanks, Ann (without an 'e', Brian), Christopher, ChrisG (very funny, Chris!) and Jerome.

I shall have to do some homework, won't I? I got out my trusty boxed set of
"The OXFORD Anthology of GREAT ENGLISH POETRY" and old Eusden's not in either of the volumes. I've got 100s more poetry books so I'll find him somewhere.

This comp has made me realise that I'm ignorant of some, but not all, of the poets laureate. (The last two on the list i.e. the living ones, aren't among my favourite poets, I have to say.)

Jayne

Thank you, Jayne. Nahum Tate is the chap who improved King Lear by giving it a happy ending. His version played for many years in place of the original which was just too depressing, eh?

Was John Skelton a Laureate? He said he was

Sorry about the mis-spelling, Ann.

I'll try to remember in future to leave off the "e", Jayn.

This competition - which we should all have seen coming - would be hard enough without our having to mimic a laureate. Tennyson, Betheman and Hughes at least have distinctive styles and themes one can latch on to. Many of the others seem just to have gone in for generic toadying. Now, if they'd made Larkin laureate, we'd have some fun.

O tempora, O more e's

Jubilee

Crow said, What's with this Jubilee stuff?
Wasn't once enough?

Coaches and carriages,
Births and marriages.
Furbelows and fripperies,
Funerals and Jubilees.
Rank and rotten,
Soon forgotten.
Just as well,
Ding dong bell.
But what do I know?
Hell, what do I know,
Said Crow, pulling a worm from the ground
Which he ate with a scrunchy sort of a sound.

You're a long time dead,
Crow said.

Improved (doncha think?)

Jubilee

Crow said, what's with this Jubilee stuff?
Wasn't once enough?
Rank, rotten,
And best forgotten.

Births, marriages,
Funerals and Jubilees.
Coaches, carriages,
Furbelows and fripperies.

But Liz rules OK,
That's what they say.
And what do I know,
Hell, what do I know?

Crow pulled a worm from the ground.
He ate it with a scrunchy sort of a sound.
You're a long time dead, said Crow.
Mind how you go.

A good one, John (..."with a scrunchy sort of sound"...)

I'll forgiv you if you somtims forgt to put th 'e' in Jayn, Brian, but I tnd to gt a bit mor annoyd whn popl omit th 'y' from my nam.

But there are worse things than that, Jayne. It took me ages to live down the day at school when I received a letter from a slightly dyslexic friend addressed to "Brain Allgar".

My husband's friend Alan used to know a man called Brian Tuma. Honestly.

Of all the names - whatever were his parents thinking of?

Jayne

I took a run at Tennyson:

Boadicea led our dauntless island race
In savage times when rebel fire was needed.
To her strength hast thou added calm and grace
As history’s call in this age thou hast heeded.

Sounds exactly like Tennyson all the way through the first word. Kinda drops off after that. So I'm going with Cibber.

I've had a go at a bit of Tennyson, though maybe it's not quite what Lucy wants:

It little profits that an aged queen,
Too far from idle, in a bankrupt land,
Matched with a grumpy spouse, I smile and wave,
And do the royal business, year on year.
I need to rest from reigning: let me drink
The cocoa of retirement. Come, my dogs,
My trusty corgis, with me to the West,
To gentle twilight and to sunset years,
And then beyond the sunset, where a crown
Means nothing, where there are no Jubilees.
This is my son, my poor self-pitying Charles.
He wants the job, and though he’ll make a botch,
As he has botched most things, the land deserves
No better. Let him try, while for myself
I’ll sit and rest, and read the racing news,
And feed the dogs, and never have to care.

George, that actually moved me very much. I loved it, and I bet Her Madge would, too.

Thanks, Ann. You've cheered my heart.

In for a penny - I decided to include the sweet white wine from Cargoes

I must go down to the Jubilee, and all I ask is a barge,
I’d keel over with mirth for a single berth, it needn’t be very large,
And some Queenly waves, to a hoarse God Save and peals from the floating carilion
And the crowd’s great roar, as we ship our oars, past the royals in their royal pavilion.
I must go view the River Pageant from a quinquireme,
Oh, how I'd glow as up river we’d row, or merrily down the stream,
And all I ask is seagulls, with their sea-squawks, down the line
and a cargo of apes and peacocks, all awash with sweet white wine.
I must go down to the Jubilee, to the Jubilee in a boat,
For why are we here, if not to cheer, thank god, we're still afloat?

Frank

That's a win, Frank. I have improved my Hughes. I think it's much better now.

There’s a jubilant buzz over Wapping,
They’re embroidering banners in Slough,
And even in Ealing, the people are feeling
A touch patriotic for now.

When she came to the throne, there was smog in
The City (no “traders” or “killings”),
And some of our money was still rather funny;
A crown was worth only five shillings.

But the crown that she bears on her noggin
Is a jewel beyond any price;
Sixty years she has worn it, though scoundrels would pawn it
To fund their republican vice.

So we think that it’s all simply topping;
We’ve sent her a Jubilee text:
“Dear Elizabeth R, what a stayer you are,
And your Platinum Jubilee’s next!”

John, I don't want to upset you, but I think I actually prefer your first version, especially the ending. But then -

what the hell do I know,
said Crow.

With apologies to Southey's 'Blenheim':

Twenty-twelve? What a year that was!
For we had the Olympics too, you see,
And those most certainly never come free -
A pity in times of austerity.
Still, we had a lovely Jubilee.

We were told we were having a marvellous day
By excitable chaps from the BBC
And the Royals looked quite possessed by glee
As they waved at us from their balcony.
Yes, they had a lovely Jubilee.

And everyone took the day off work,
Which made quite a dent in the GDP
Of a country at risk of insolvency -
Well, the subsequent crash is history,
But it was a lovely Jubilee.

Dash it, Brian. And I've sent the second one off. I should have listened to you. But, come to that, I can send the first one AS WELL.

Nah, John, don't listen to me. Whenever I send multiple entries, if I win at all, it's always the one I thought was the third best. The first two are destined for the shredder.