A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
5. ‘And then the justice’
Shakespeare’s ‘fifth age’ brings us to middle age with the justice of the peace: ‘In fair round belly, with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances.’ The middle-aged spread has set in; we are taking ourselves more seriously, indulging in delivering nuggets of wisdom (the ‘wise saws’) and settling into our cliché-riven anecdotage (the ‘modern instances’).
To learn by heart, I have chosen three very different poems that should resonate with those who are familiar with the harsh realities of middle age. The first is a poem about being a poet in a world where real adults do real work. It is by the British ‘modernist’ poet, Basil Bunting: Quaker, pacifist, imprisoned as a conscientious objector at the end of the First World War, but serving with distinction in British Military Intelligence during the Second World War, journalist, music critic, diplomat, eccentric and firm believer in the importance of speaking poetry out loud. Late in life he published ‘Advice to Young Poets’, which begins:
I SUGGEST
1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound.
The second poem is by Robert Hayden, who in the 1970s became the first African-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role known today as US Poet Laureate. In the poem Hayden reflects on the reality of his father’s working life.
The third poem is by the British journalist and humorist, Paul Jennings. It’s a poem in which a middle-aged man (Jennings was coming up to forty when he wrote it) takes delight in wearing galoshes, hopelessly unfashionable but wonderfully useful waterproof overshoes, typically made of rubber.
What the Chairman Told Tom
by Basil Bunting
(1900–85)
Poetry? It’s a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
It’s not work. You don’t sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.
Art, that’s opera; or repertory –
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.
But to ask for twelve pounds a week –
married, aren’t you? –
you’ve got a nerve.
How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?
Who says it’s poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.
I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I’m an accountant.
They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?
Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it’s unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.
They’re Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.
Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
(1913–80)
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Galoshes
by Paul Jennings
(1918–89)
I am having a rapprochement with galoshes
And some would say this heralds middle age;
Yes, sneering they would say
‘Does he always wear pince-nez?
Old jossers wore galoshes when the ladies’ hats were cloches,
Ha! Woollen combinations are this dodderer’s next stage!’
Well, let the people snigger
Just because my feet look bigger,
For, colossal in galoshes, they are dry among the sploshes;
A story that won’t wash is this story that galoshes,
So snug at slushy crossings, make a man a sloppy figure.
Oh, crossly, and still crosslier,
I have bought shoes even costlier,
Which, still quite new, let water through before I’ve crossed the street:
There’s nothing manly, I repeat,
In always having cold wet feet;
Galoshlessness is foolishness when sharply slants the sleet –
And I utterly refuse
The expression ‘overshoes’,
To make galoshes posher I would scorn this feeble ruse.
The word ‘galosh’ is not strong, not weak,
It comes from kalopous, the Greek
For ‘cobbler’s last’, and thus it’s classed with hero times antique.
Come, Muse, through slush and sleet dry-footed with me trip so
That I may praise galoshes in a kalopous calypso.
Oh, when swishing buses splash,
And the rush-hour masses clash,
When it’s marshy as molasses, how galoshes cut a dash!
It makes me quite impassioned
When they’re dubbed unsmart, old-fashioned –
(For such, by gosh, the bosh is that’s talked about galoshes)
Since the very finest leather
Is outsmarted altogether
By the classy, glossy polish of galoshes in such weather.
Come, galoshers, be assertive,
Drop that air discreet and furtive!
Let galosh shops’ stocks be lavish
With designs and hues that ravish –
Men’s galoshes black and British, but for ladies colours skittish
(And galoshes could make rings
Round those silly plastic things
Which tie up with clumsy strings)
Let us all have this rapprochement with galoshes
And see what health and happiness it brings!
6. ‘The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon’
When You are Old
by W. B. Yeats
(1865–1939)
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
The Last Laugh
by John Betjeman
(1906–84)
I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now, if the harvest is over
And the world cold,
Give me the bonus of laughter
A Poem Just For Me
by Roger McGough
(born 1937)
Where am I now when I need me
Suddenly where have I gone
I’m so alone here without me
Tell me please, what have I done?
Once I did most things together
I went for walks hand in hand
I shared myself so completely
I met my every demand.
Tell me I’ll come back tomorrow
I’ll keep my arms open wide
Tell me that I’ll never leave me
My place is here at my side.
Maybe I’ve simply mislaid me
Like an umbrella or key
So until the day that I come my way
Here is a poem just for me.
7. ‘Last scene of all … second childishness and mere oblivion’
Professor Goswami and her colleagues at the Memory Laboratory at Cambridge University tell me that the poetry you will remember when you reach the end of the road is probably the poetry you learnt when you were very young. ‘First in, last out’ is the essence of it. I was very very young when I first learnt this:
Buckingham Palace
by A. A. Milne
(1882–1956)
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
‘A soldier’s life is terrible hard,’
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
‘One of the sergeants looks after their socks,’
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
‘Well, God take care of him, all the same,’
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They’ve great big parties inside the grounds.
‘I wouldn’t be King for a hundred pounds,’
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn’t the King’s.
‘He’s much too busy a-signing things,’
Says Alice.
They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
‘Do you think the King knows all about me?’
‘Sure to, dear, but it’s time for tea,’
Says Alice.
What we were given as children is what we keep the longest: our childhood is our friend to the end.
Reading the Classics
by Brian Patten
(born 1946)
The Secret Garden will never age;
The tangled undergrowth remains as fresh
As when the author put down her pen.
Its mysteries are as poignant now as then.
Though Time’s a thief it cannot thieve
One page from the world of make-believe.
On the track the Railway Children wait;
Alice still goes back and forth through the glass;
In Tom’s Midnight Garden Time unfurls,
And children still discover secret worlds.
At the Gates of Dawn Pan plays his pipes;
Mole and Ratty still float in awe downstream.
The weasels watch, hidden in the grass.
None cares how quickly human years pass.
Though Time’s a thief it cannot thieve
One page from the world of make-believe.
CHAPTER TEN
Year In, Year OutPoetry for all seasons
Are you sitting comfortably?
Well, you shouldn’t be. Sitting, it seems, is the new smoking. According to researchers at Queen’s University, Belfast, being seated for more than six hours a day is responsible for 70,000 deaths a year in the UK.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that a brisk walk even once a week is enough to reduce significantly your chances of early death. According to another study, this one published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2019, gentle weekly exercise, such as walking, can cut the risk of premature mortality by almost 20 per cent.
What is true for the body is true for the mind. If you want to keep those synapses snappy – and keep that hippocampus happy – you need mental exercise alongside physical exercise. Learning poetry by heart, on the move and round the year, allows you to maintain body, mind and soul to maximum effect.
This is how you do it:
Choose your poem.
Pop the poem into your pocket (or your knapsack or your bumbag) so you can consult it as you walk.
Work on a line or two lines at a time and keep repeating them until they’ve stuck.
Try to walk in step with the rhythm of the words: make the pace of your strides match the beat of the poem.
Try not to cross a road or change direction or make a sharp turn except at the end of a line or a stanza.
Walk where you can talk: learning a poem out loud will help you remember it much more quickly.
Walk week in, week out, throughout the year, regardless of weather – and make the poem you are learning appropriate to the season.
Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 1 to 8, in the King James Version of the Bible
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
New Year
Robert Burns, undisputed premier bard of Scotland, wrote ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in the Scots language in 1788. He based the poem on an old Scottish folk song and, over the years and around the world, it has become a tradition for it to be sung at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I give you Burns’s original, followed by an English translation. Then I give you a short poem by Jackie Kay, a contemporary poet and novelist, the third modern ‘Makar’, or Scottish poet laureate. Jackie was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white couple at birth and brought up in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and at Stirling University, where she read English. She says: ‘A poem is a little moment of belief.’
Auld Lang Syne
by Robert Burns
(1759–96)
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
For auld lang syne my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld &c.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fitt,
Sin auld lang syne.
For auld &c.
We twa hae pai
dl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.
For auld &c.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld &c.
*
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And old lang syne?
For auld lang syne my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
And surely you’ll buy your pint cup!
And surely I’ll buy mine!
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld etc.
We two have run about the slopes,
And picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
Since auld lang syne.
For auld etc.
We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
Since auld lang syne.
For auld etc.
And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld etc.
Promise
by Jackie Kay
(born 1961)
Remember, the time of year
when the future appears
like a blank sheet of paper
clean calendar, a new chance.
On thick white snow
you vow fresh footprints
then watch them go
with the wind’s hearty gust.
Fill your glass. Here’s tae us. Promises
made to be broken, made to last.
Spring
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
by Robert Browning
(1812–89)
I
Oh, to be in England,
Dancing by the Light of the Moon Page 14