The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

In A Far Land Upon A Day

In a far land upon a day,
Where never snow did fall,
Three kings went riding on the way
Bearing presents all.

And one wore red, and one wore gold,
And one was clad in green,
And one was young, and one was old,
And one was in between.

The middle one had human sense,
The young had loving eyes,
The old had much experience,
And all of them were wise.

Choosing no guide by eve and morn
But heaven's starry drifts,
They rode to find the Newly-Born
For whom they carried gifts.

Oh, far away in time they rode
Upon their wanderings,
And still in story goes abroad
The riding of the Kings.

So wise, that in their chosen hour,
As through the world they filed,
They sought not wealth or place or power,
But rode to find a child. 

– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

I've featured Eleanor Farjeon a couple of times already in the last few months (here and here, if you missed them) and in the course of researching her I came across this poem, which I thought would be great to save and share with you near Christmas.

Even for those of us who are not church-going Christians, it's a wondrous story with deep meaning, and I like the way it is told here (by one who was a believer).

Her writing often includes her delight in the natural world; her appreciation of folk tales and mythology, which she subtly reworks to make her own, adding a new dimension; and her wisdom about human nature. Here, too, you may find those things. But she was, above all, a lovely story-teller – or a teller of lovely stories – and this, also, you can see in this piece.

The ballad rhythm (a loosely metrical pattern of alternating 4-beat and 3-beat lines) can gallop inappropriately in the hands of an inexperienced poet. She avoids that trap, slowing the lines with commas, multi-syllabic words, extra syllables in some bars, and long vowels – just enough of them to do the work unobtrusively. I also like the naturalness of the rhymes – except in the first verse, where they seem a bit forced to contemporary ears; but when Farjeon began writing, inverted syntax for the sake of rhyme was an accepted convention. And it does rather fit the understated grandeur she achieves in simple, straightforward, yet artfully chosen words.

Enjoy!

Image from Public Domain

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright).

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

Excerpt from ‘Young Gerard’, in MARTIN PIPPIN IN THE APPLE ORCHARD

He kicked at the dying log on the hearth, and sent a fountain of sparks up the chimney, The child threw a dry leaf and saw it shrivel, and Young Gerard stirred the white ash and blew up the embers, and held a fan of bracken to them, till the fire ran up its veins like life in the veins of a man, and the frond that had already lived and died became a gleaming spirit, and then it too fell in ashes among the ash. Then Young Gerard took a handful of twigs and branches, and began to build upon the ash a castle of many sorts of wood, and the child helped him, laying hazel on his beech and fir upon his oak; and often before their turret was quite reared a spark would catch at the dry fringes on the fir, or the brown oak-leaves, and one twig or another would vanish from the castle. 

    ‘How quickly the wood burns,’ said the child.

    ‘That’s the lovely part of it,’ said Young Gerard, ‘the fire is always changing and doing different things with it.’ 

    And they watched the fire together, and smelled its smoke,  that had as many smells as there were sorts of wood. Sometimes it was like roast coffee, and sometimes like roast chestnuts, and sometimes like incense. And they saw the lichen on old stumps crinkle into golden ferns, or fire run up a dead tail of creeper in a red S, and vanish in mid-air like an Indian boy climbing a rope, or crawl right through the middle of a birch-twig, making hieroglyphics that glowed and faded between the grey scales of the bark. And then suddenly it caught the whole scaffolding of their castle, and blazed up through the fir and oak and spiny thorns and dead leaves, and the bits of old bark all over blue-grey-green rot, and the young sprigs almost budding, and hissing with sap. And for one moment they saw all the skeleton and soul of the castle without its body, before it fell in.

– Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

As I said a couple of weeks ago, my own post on Eleanor Farjeon inspired me to re-read this lovely book – not for the first time. I’m loving it as much as ever.

It was first written in 1922, and is a series of stories within a story.

This passage had me remembering the wood fires of my childhood, before we all had electric heaters, let alone the variety of sophisticated methods available to us now.

We would tell stories around the fire of an evening, or play word games. Sometimes we would toast bread on long toasting-forks made of twisted wire. Sometimes we would roast chestnuts.

I loved to gaze into the fire just as the two in this story did, seeing the many magical sights in the flames and sparks, the coal and ash.

Although this is prose, I think it is such excellent prose that it blurs the boundaries between prose and poetry, and has much to teach any writer.

Above all, I wanted to share it because it delights me. I hope you enjoy it too.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older writings may be out of copyright). The cover illustration I have used here shows same cover that my first copy had.

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

It Was Long Ago

I'll tell you, shall I, something I remember?
Something that still means a great deal to me.
It was long ago.

A dusty road in summer I remember,
A mountain, and an old house, and a tree
That stood, you know,

Behind the house. An old woman I remember
In a red shawl with a grey cat on her knee
Humming under a tree.

She seemed the oldest thing I can remember.
But then perhaps I was not more than three.
It was long ago.

I dragged on the dusty road, and I remember
How the old woman looked over the fence at me
And seemed to know

How it felt to be three, and called out, I remember
'Do you like bilberries and cream for tea?'
I went under the tree.

And while she hummed, and the cat purred, I remember
How she filled a saucer with berries and cream for me
So long ago.

Such berries and such cream as I remember
I never had seen before, and never see
Today, you know.

And that is almost all I can remember,
The house, the mountain, the gray cat on her knee,
Her red shawl, and the tree,

And the taste of the berries, the feel of the sun I remember,
And the smell of everything that used to be
So long ago,

Till the heat on the road outside again I remember
And how the long dusty road seemed to have for me
No end, you know.

That is the farthest thing I can remember.
It won't mean much to you. It does to me.
Then I grew up, you see.

— Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

I used to love Eleanor Farjeon's stories when I was growing up. Sometimes they contained poems; and this poem could well have been written for children. The 'you know' and 'you see' (which I admit I find slightly irritating) could suggest as much.

However the nostalgia for a special moment in childhood belongs to the adult, even if in the poem she means to address children. She makes me feel it too, almost as if I had had that very experience. Although I didn't, and you didn't, we can all, I'm sure, remember berries and cream, sunny days, dusty roads, cats and kindly old women.

Wikipedia tells us that she 'was an English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire. Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers.'

She came from an artistic and literary family. Her father was a novelist, her mother the daughter of an actor. Poetry Foundation describes their home as 'a literary and artistic hub'. One younger brother grew up to be a composer, another a novelist, and the oldest (to whom she was very close) a Shakespearean scholar and drama critic. A timid child with poor eyesight ('Just like me!' I can't help thinking) Eleanor grew up to have a wide range of literary friends, including D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas.

Her best-known poem was written as a hymn, to put words to an old Gaelic tune. You'll know it — it's the beautiful Morning Has Broken (which she titled Morning Song) usually credited to Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) whose singing popularised it.

Her best-known novel, the unforgettable Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard, was written for adults but became famous as a children's story. It works on both levels, delighted me when I was a child and still does.

You can read more of her poems at PoemHunter. Some of her books (more fiction than poetry) are listed at her Amazon page; a few of them are even in Kindle. I just grabbed the Martin Pippin book and its sequel, Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field; high time for a re-read.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright). This picture of Eleanor Farjeon is in the Public Domain.