[David Halitsky]

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).]

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Couldn't be published these days? I think Light would take it in a heartbeat.

For that matter, if Odgen were still alive, he'd be selling on his name alone and would have it in the New Yorker.

Anyway, I'm not certain what you mean about the long line or even stylistically. This is anapestic tetrameter with some iambic substitutions, or you could just count it as accentual syllabic as tet as well.

In fact, I'm kind of amazed at this being thought so unusual, since I had a poem a few years ago published with almost exactly the same meter,
"Ferdinand Feghoot and the Zero-G Nunnery" , the only difference being that I used some feminine line ends, going dactyllic instead of anapestic, and had five stanzas of ten lines each instead of seven of eight as Nash has here, but fifty lines of dactyllic tet versus fifty-six lines of anapestic tet, all done in couplets?

But anyway, thanks for showing the Nash poem. I hadn't read it before and it is great fun.

[David Halitsky]

Kevin Andrew Murphy -

A misunderstanding due to failure on my part to communicate clearly. The force of my phrase "ANOTHER form" [caps added here by DH] was intended precisely to mean that Nash could not only do his trademark meandering line well, but also more traditional forms such as the one employed in this poem.

Glad you liked the piece and also glad you believe our times are not so parlous that it could not get published.

Best regards
David Halitsky

[Henry Quince]

Yes, I’ve been a Nash fan from childhood. Here’s one of his (mostly) long-line pieces. Really these pieces come close to being prose with clever rhymes, but he makes them work.


The Terrible People
by Ogden Nash

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it,
And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it.
I don’t mind their having a lot of money, and I don’t care how they employ it,
But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
But no, they insist on being stealthy
About the pleasures of being wealthy,
And the possession of a handsome annuity
Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duity.
You cannot conceive of an occasion
Which will find them without some suitable evasion.
Yes indeed, with arguments they are very fecund;
Their first point is that money isn’t everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second.
Some people’s money is merited,
And other people’s is inherited,
But wherever it comes from,
They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from.
Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing,
But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing.
The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can’t cure,
Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.
Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won’t buy, but it’s very funny --
Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

[Janet Kenny]

David and Henry,
Blessings on you both for those miraculous Ogdens. He is one of the reasons I loved poetry as a child.
These are extra special.
Janet

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Henry I LOVE that. I'd adore a try at a handsome annuity, or indeed a handsome anything else come to think of it, now we get to it...

Ogden Nash was to me as a child a hint of the glamour of my grandparent's' New York. Strangely. He mixes up in my mind with the smell of their apartment building and the old ladies you used to see with blue rinses and mink stoles. All the grownups had his books, and I was left to discover them in people's bookshelves - along with the Bennett Cerf omnibuses.

KEB

[Mark Allinson]

Here are Nash's Verses for Camille Saint-Saens's
Circus of the Animals

INTRODUCTION

Camille Saint-Saens
Was wracked with pains,
When people addressed him,
As Saint Sanes.
He held the human race to blame,
Because it could not pronounce his name.
So, he turned with metronome and fife,
To glorify other kinds of life.
Be quiet please - for here begins
His salute to feathers, fur, and fins.


THE LION

The lion is the king of beasts,
And husband of the lioness.
Gazelles and things on which he feasts
Address him as your highoness.
There are those that admire that roar of his,
In the African jungles and velds,
But, I think that wherever the lion is,
I’d rather be somewhere else.


COCKS AND HENS

The rooster is a roistering hoodlum,
His battle cry is "cock-a-doodleum".
Hands in pockets, cap over eye,
He whistles at pullets, passing by.

THE WILD JACKASS

Have ever you harked to the jackass wild,
Which scientists call the onager?
It sounds like the laugh of an idiot child,
Or a hepcat on a harmoniger.
But do not sneer at the jackass wild,
There is a method in his heehaw.
For with maidenly blush and accent mild
The jenny-ass answers shee-haw.

THE TORTOISE

Come crown my brow with leaves of myrtle,
I know the tortoise is a turtle,
Come carve my name in stone immortal,
I know the turtoise is a tortle.
I know to my profound despair,
I bet on one to beat a hare.
I also know I’m now a pauper,
Because of its tortley, turtley, torper.

THE ELEPHANT

Elephants are useful friends,
Equipped with handles at both ends.
They have a wrinkled moth-proof hide.
Their teeth are upside down, outside.
If you think the elephant preposterous,
You’ve probably never seen a rhinosterous.

KANGAROOS

The kangaroo can jump incredible,
He has to jump because he is edible.
I could not eat a kangaroo,
But many fine Australians do.
Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs,
Prefer him in tasty kangaroomeringues.


THE AQUARIUM

Some fish are minnows,
Some are whales.
People like dimples,
Fish like scales,
Some fish are slim,
And some are round,
They don’t get cold,
They don’t get drowned.
But every fishwife
Fears for her fish.
What we call mermaids
They call merfish.


MULES

In the world of mules
There are no rules.
(Laughing, In the world of mules
There are no rules)

THE CUCKOO IN THE WILD

Cuckoos lead bohemian lives,
They fail as husbands and as wives,
Therefore, they cynically disparage
Everybody else’s marriage.

BIRDS

Puccini was Latin, and Wagner Teutonic,
And birds are incurably philharmonic,
Suburban yards and rural vistas
Are filled with avian Andrew Sisters.
The skylark sings a roundelay,
The crow sings "The Road to Mandalay,"
The nightingale sings a lullaby,
And the sea gull sings a gullaby.
That’s what shepherds listened to in Arcadia
Before somebody invented the radia.

PIANISTS

Some claim that pianists are human,
Heh, and quote the case of Mr. Truman.
Saint Saens on the other hand,
Considered them a scurvy band.
A blight they are he said, and simian,
Instead of normal men and wimian.

FOSSILS

At midnight in the museum hall,
The fossils gathered for a ball.
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
Rolling, rattling carefree circus,
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
Amid the mastodonic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil,
"Cheer up sad world," he said and winked,
"It’s kind of fun to be extinct."

THE SWAN

The swan can swim while sitting down,
For pure conceit he takes the crown,
He looks in the mirror over and ovea,
And claims to have never heard of Pavlova.

THE GRAND FINALE

Now we’ve reached the grand finale,
On an animalie, carnivalie.
Noises new to sea and land,
Issue from the skillful band.
All the strings contort their features,
Imitating crawly creatures.
All the brasses look like mumps
From blowing umpah, umpah, umps.
In outdoing Barnum and Bailey, and Ringling,
Saint Saens has done a miraculous thingling.

- Ogden Nash