Ogden Nash was mentioned kindly the other day in a post over (under?) at the Deep-End. His mastery of the long and winding road (ooops, I mean line) is well-known. Here is an example of another form which he could handle quite well.
It is a little sad to know this piece could probably not see publication these days, even if updated stylistically.
The Seven Spiritual Ages of Mrs. Marmaduke Moore
by Ogden Nash
Mrs. Marmaduke Moore, at the age of ten
(Her name was Jemima Jevons then),
Was the quaintest of little country maids.
Her pigtails slapped on her shoulderblades ;
She fed the chickens, and told the truth
And could spit like a boy through a broken tooth.
She could climb a tree to the topmost perch,
And she used to pray in the Methodist church.
At the age of twenty her heart was pure,
And she caught the fancy of Mr. Moore.
He broke his troth (to a girl named Alice),
And carried her off to his city palace,
Where she soon forgot her childhood piety
And joined the orgies of high society.
Her voice grew English, or , say, Australian,
And she studied to be an Episcopalian.
At thirty our lives are still before us,
But Mr. Moore had a friend in the chorus.
Connubial bliss was overthrown
And Mrs. Moore now slumbered alone.
Hers was a nature that craved affection;
She gave herself up to introspection;
Then finding theosophy rather dry,
Found peace in the sweet Bahai and Bahai.
Forty! and still an abandoned wife,
She felt old urges stirring to life,
She dipped her locks in a bowl of henna
And booked a passage through to Vienna.
She paid a professor a huge emolument
To demonstrate what his ponderous volumes meant.
Returning she preached to the unemployed
The gospel according to St. Freud.
Fifty! she haunted museums and galleries,
And pleased young men by augmenting their salaries .
Oh, it shouldn't occur, but it does occur,
That poets are made by fools like her.
Her salon was full of frangipani,
Roumanian, Russian and Hindustani,
And she conquered par as well as bogey
By reading a book and going Yogi.
Sixty! and time was on her hands----
Maybe remorse and maybe glands.
She felt a need for free confession
To publish each youthful indiscretion,
And before she was gathered to her mothers,
To compare her sinlets with those of others,
Mrs. Moore gave a joyous whoop,
And immersed herself in the Oxford group.
That is the story of Mrs. Moore,
As far as it goes. But of this I'm sure ---
When seventy stares her in the face
She'll have found some other state of grace.
Mohammed may be her lord and master,
Or Zeus, or Mithros, or Zoroaster,
For when a lady is badly sexed
God knows what God is coming next.
[This message has been edited by David Halitsky (edited March 02, 2005).]
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