Category: The Enlightenment & Victorian

The Ballad of Miss Pickle

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1980.409.1a?c

The Ballad of Miss Pickle

She skipped to the balls
In her crinoline gown,
With verdurous falls
In the drapes of her crown.
She rustled and twirled
As she danced with their gaze,
And pleatings unfurled
In a deep-lustred prase.
     Hers was no ruby or aquamarine –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

All season she danced
In her favourite hue –
Her eyes were enhanced,
And her blossoming grew.
Her costume was styled
To flicker the room –
The beaux she beguiled,
Her shamrock in bloom.
     Hers was no palette of altering scene –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

The following year
As the bucks met to fool,
They longed she’d appear –
Their taffeta jewel.
But salon and do
Were all lacking her shade –
They felt far too blue
And in want of her jade.
     Hers was no presence, but absentee queen –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

Then shocking they heard
Of her sudden demise –
The poison transferred
From the arsenite dyes.
She wilted last winter,
She couldn’t have known
How deadly the tints were
In which she was sewn.
     Hers was no longer, a tragic eighteen –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

A young woman dies
In much retching and bile
To set off her eyes
And to brighten her smile.
Her end was a blur
With her lights in distress,
But do not blame her
For the tinge of her dress.
     Hers was no moral to vanity’s preen –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

She skips to the balls
In her crinoline gown,
And her glowing enthrals
With a growing renown.
Remember her this way
From bodice to hem –
A verdant display
From a radiant gem.
     A shimmer and sparkle, a ripening sheen –
     The glorious girl in the emerald green.

More commonly referred to as Paris Green, but the rhythm of ’emerald’ suited me better.

Sorry, Elizabeth

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big ben tower london
Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

Sorry, Elizabeth

“Big Ben is only the bell,”
You smugly tell,
But actu’lly, we already know.
Except you’re wrong:
It’s the bit that goes bong,
And ev’rything else, above and below.
Big Ben is the bell,
And the clock as well,
And even the whole bloody tower !
Ask any you meet
On Parli’ment Street
Whenever he’s chiming the hour.

Newton’s Cradle

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newton
Isaac Newton as a Child by an unknown artist

Newton’s Cradle

A child is born in dead of winter,
Child to bring the summer in –
He teases rainbows from the sunshine,
Lets enlightenment begin.
He brings us universal laws –
For as above, then so below.
He shows the path that we must follow,
Teaches how the heavens go.

Brightly shines his star above
In both his eyepiece and his eyes –
His clockwork earth perturbs the sun,
His motion never dies.
He shows us how all things must love –
We all attract and all obey.
So promises the savant one
Who’s born on Christmas Day.

A child is born in dead of winter,
Child to set the world alight –
He mechanises all our fluids,
Magnifies the heavens bright.
He stands atop the giants’ shoulders,
Calculates the cosmic story –
From the leastest fractions upwards,
His the powers and the glory.

He wants to save the human genus
From the couterfeiter’s haul.
Apples are the fruit of learning –
Worlds shall rise to meet their fall.
He shows us how the warmth between us
Never really goes away –
Hark the one who keeps us burning,
Born on Christmas Day.

Many sources cite Isaac as being born on 25th December 1642, while many others claim it was on 4th January 1643.  Both are correct.  At the time of his birth, the Julian Calandar was still in use in Britain, but the 10-days-ahead Gregorian had been adopted in continental Europe (and more to the point, by the modern audience reading those dates).

Likewise, the day he died can be shown as variously 20th March 1726, 20th March 1727, or 31st March 1727.  So, firstly, during his lifespan the Julian had drifted to 11 days out (which accounts for the 31st March reference).  And secondly, the official New Year’s Day in England was 25th March, thus 1726 ran from 25th March to 24th March (four days after he died) – but again, this is often retrospectively adjusted (or sometimes half-adjusted, changing the New Year but not the Calandar)

All-in-all, a curious mix-up over a man obsessed with orbits.

Little Drummer Boy

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drummer boy
A Drummer Boy of the Royal Scots Dragoon by George Joy

Little Drummer Boy

Rat-a-tat-tat,
Came the boy with the drum,
In red coat and drumsticks
’tween finger and thumb
In his breeches of blue,
With his skin taut and true,
With a rat-a-tat-tat,
And a roll and a thrum,
He silenced the scrum
With a snare tattoo –
He may have been dumb,
And his feet felt numb,
But he pounded his drum
In a one-one-two.

He played for the Lord,
And the right of the sword,
With his rat-a-tat-tat,
And the planes and the bombs,
On his tom-a-tom-toms,
With a splat-a-tat-splat.
And he drummed-in the troops
With his patterns and loops,
And he drilled the recruits
In their berets and boots,
And he stamped his feet
For these proud mothers’ sons,
In a perfect beat
To their crack-a-crack guns.

On the holiest night,
With a rat-a-tat-tat,
He led the Lord’s might
With a gat-a-gat-gat.
And guided by drones,
So he led the bombs home,
Then marched all the dead out to Kingdom Come.
With a rat-a-tat-tat,
And a mournful hum,
So the innocents died
To the beat of his drum.

Not Only Pascal’s Wager

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white dices on checked wood
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Not Only Pascal’s Wager

If God is not, and I believe,
Then my mistake shall matter none to me –
And when I come this life to leave,
I matter none to void infinity.

If God there is, and I abstain,
Then my mistake shall matter great and well –
And when I quit this earthly plain,
I matter none to He who saves from Hell.

If God is not, or God there is,
Still our mistake, for taking up this bet.
So ere our lives are done, know this –
They matter much, they might be all we get.

Salient Thoughts

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Ypres

Salient Thoughts

Passing through Ypres,
We paused for a moment to take in the Cloth Hall.
By the cathedral we parked,
And we wandered the Grote Markt,
Charmed and yet chilled
By the way they had carefully rebuilt it all.

The shops were all shut –
(We’d come on a Sunday, just wanted a look)
English words blared from their posters and flyers
So locals or ex-pats ?  We didn’t enquire.
Their windows were filled
With helmets and biscuits and rifles and books.

Then down to the Menin Gate –
Far too triumphant and proud of its names:
Look at how many I bear !
They all did their duty and lie who-knows-where.
Just look at our killed !
And dare you resist us, and dare you lay blame ?

Rank upon rank of surnames,
With first-names reduced to only initials.
People I found myself wishing
Had told their nations to carry on fishing –
But instead, they had fought.
And here were their names, to make it official.

The flags barely moved,
And a few of us found ourselves holding our breath,
And it all seemed so lonely and still
And so thankfully long since the kill,
And yet still overwrought –
A faded and motionless orgy of death.

Ah, hindsight you rogue !
But let us not hate the hard lessons you tell.
So maybe it’s time to finally suture,
Time now for Ypres to find a new future.
And here’s a thought:
Maybe let’s spell it as Ieper from here on as well.

Mortal Remains

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burial cemetery countryside cross
Photo by Mikes Photos on Pexels.com

Mortal Remains

These tombstones are listed, these crypts are protected,
Preserving the love and the pride that erected
These grand mausoleums and gravesides historic,
Their statements and passions to questions rhetoric.
Yet time shall erode with its rain and its frost,
Till their dates are obscured and their epitaphs lost.
It weathers their angels and softens their urns,
As lichens enshroud and subsidence upturns,
And insects will burrow in mortar and crack,
And ivy will clamber and marble turn black.
Yet do not repair them, their tarnish amassing –
Such monuments solemn are records of passing.

Roofus

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ancient architecture building church
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Roofus

How do churches stop the rain ?
And send the downpours down the drain ?
That’s pretty simple to explain –

See, the footings hold the buttress,
And the buttress holds the flyer,
And the flyer holds the corbel,
And the corbel takes the strain.
For the corbel hold the springbrace,
And the stringbrace holds the hammerbeam,
And hammerbeams hold hammerposts,
And up, and up again.
These hammerposts hold collar-ties,
And the collar holds the kingpost high,
And the kingpost holds the ridge-beam,
And in turn, the weathervane.
So the kingpost holds the struts up,
And struts support the rafters –
Or at least, they hold the principals –
(The big ones, in the main.)
Then the rafters holds the purlins,
And the purlins holds the sheathing,
And the sheathing holds the shingles,
And the shingles stop the rain.

Hammerbeam roofs were developed in England in the 1300s, but not named such until the 1820s.  So just why are the short horizontal ties called hammerbeams ?  I mean, what’s so hammer-y about them ?  I suspect it was just to show that architects could be manly when talking about their erect members.

The History of an Industrial Revolution, Located in a Parallel Universe

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The Iron Forge
The Iron Forge by Joseph Wright

The History of an Industrial Revolution, Located in a Parallel Universe

There was a time before the steam,
The world was truly manned –
Each ditch was dug and plough was drug
By animal or hand –
And all the light to see by came
From tallow or the sun.
So lives would trudge on just the same,
Each short and brutal run.
There was a time before the steam,
The only help was wind or stream –
So up we moved to brook or hill,
Forever lashed to nature’s will –
We’d tap the earth to drive our mill.
A little better, maybe – but we’d only just begun.

There was a time before the steam,
The world was short and slow.
Our only fuel was ox or mule,
Or when the wind might blow.
And all the warmth in winter came
From hearths of wood or peat,
With forests lost to make a flame
And give a little heat.
There was a time before the steam,
Before the pitch-black golden seam,
When all the energy not hooved
Could not be bottled, bred or moved.
Our lives could only be improved
By pilgrimage to power on our thousand weary feet.

There was a time before the steam,
The world was harshly ranged –
The days were long, yet swiftly gone,
And nothing ever changed.
But then came coal – the good earth’s soul,
The black and frozen fire –
And finally we took control,
And built our chimneys higher.
There was a time before the steam,
But that was then – before the gleam
Of pistons, valves and proud machines
Whose vapour-thrust provides the means
For endless and precise routines –
To serve our ev’ry labour and to never miss or tire.

There was a time before the steam,
To which we dread return –
But once the coke is up in smoke,
Well, what then will we burn ?
We’ve still got wind and rivers, sure,
But only local clout –
And charcoal gobbles trees the more,
Till none are left to sprout.
To where there’s folk about.
Will there be times beyond the steam,
A flywheel to prolong the dream ?
If only we can tame the spark –
The lightning bolt, the static arc –
And store it, then release its bark !
Or else we face an Age of Dark, when all the lights go out.

The Voyage of the Novum Organum

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frontispiece
frontispiece from Novum Organum Scientiarum by Francis Bacon, art by anon

The Voyage of the Novum Organum

’Twas in the summer of ’20
When our galleon set sale.
Now gather ye, and plenty,
As I lay the fearless tale:
We soon approached the pillars bold
That Hercules himself, we’re told,
Had planted, so’s to say “Behold !
Behold these sights, and quail !
Here lies the End of the Earth, my friends,
And who knows what may lie beyond ?
It’s time to find what you’re worth, my friends,
If dareꞌst ye leave your pond.
Will you view my gates as a warning ?
Then head for home on the turning tide.
Or will you view my gates as a dawning ?
Then pass on through to the other side !”

Who knows if God shall forsake us ?
Who knows where the currents take us ?
Over the seas on our questing quest:
With our fortunes pressed for the holy grail,
As on and on we sail.

So wise old Captain Bacon
Gave the word to pass on through.
We prayed he weren’t mistaken
And a-gambling with his crew.
We sailed betwixt those ancient piers,
And set a course for new frontiers.
Once Argonauts, now pioneers !
’Twas time to earn our due.
“There lies the Start of the Earth, my friends,
When we find out what lies ahead !
It’s time to give rebirth, my friends,
It’s time to raise the dead !”
We knew great riches would await us,
All our maps were full of exes !
We dug up booty with apparatus,
And unearthed keys to fresh complexes.

Follow the clues, be smart and plucky –
Here be dragons, if we’re lucky !
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The better we guessed, the more we unveiled,
As on and on we sailed.

We plumbed that deep wide ocean
So’s to chart her reefs and bars
The first we found was motion –
It was written in the stars !
Then spied we microscopic forms –
A hidden world of tiny swarms.
We shuddered, but we rode such storms,
And better for the scars.
There lies so much joy on this Earth, my friends –
Let’s find out what we share her with !
There’s nowhere upon her in dearth, my friends –
She’s always more to give !
We sailed upon her seas of numbers,
Fathomed her amounts amounting:
Formulas and patterns slumbered –
Ev’rything, we learned, was counting.

And the point where the limit of our learning meets,
There’s always a fair wind filling our sheets.
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The more we professed, the more we regaled,
As on and on we sailed.

The further out our striving,
So the better stocked our stores.
And always we’re arriving
Onto ever-stranger shores.
And on those lands we took our drills
And tapped the streams and dug the hills
And set down bridges, rails and mills,
And just and noble laws.
We learned how the whole of the Earth, my friends,
Is built from the same few blocks, not more !
We learned how the life round her girth, my friends,
Is built from life before !
We sailed away to explore and learn,
And still there is so much more to find !
We know we can never again return
To that ancient world that we left behind.

We’ll never be bored and we’ll never be done –
We’ll never arrive at the setting sun.
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The more we progress, the higher we scale,
As on and on we sail.