Poetry Forum

I am trying to find out about the poem which begins:
"Once in an old fashioned garden
A long time ago I suppose"
Does anyone know when it was written and who wrote it?

I've looked for this one...thought it was Robert Frost but I couldn't find anything by him.

Will keep looking...

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Do you know what it's called?

An no, I don't think it's by Robert Frost - I can't find a single poem of his that starts anything like this. I've searched his whole collection. Could be wrong, though.

Alex

Yes I now see that that was wrong too...

I don't know why I thought of Frost...

hm....

Would this give you a clue?
It was learnt by a friend when at school. She is now 74'ish. I will get the full poem and post it - it is really nice (maybe a bit twee but still nice)

Helo again. Here is the full poem. As I said it is a bit twee but I find it very poignant.
Once in an old fashioned garden
A long time ago I suppose
There grew a slender white lily
And close to it grew a rose

Now they both loved the amorous West Wind
And how it happened nobody knows
But a kiss that was meant for the lily
Got wafted away to the rose

And ever since then for this reason
At least so the story goes
There's a sad faded droop to the lily
And a blush on the cheek of the rose


A-a-a-a-h
Nice innit!!

Could it be a variant of "The Lily and the Rose", on http://www.alrunaspoetry.com/ ? If so, it seems to be anonymous. It looks as though it may have been meant for popular recital - Bring it back ! -, which would go some way towards explaining the instability of the text.

V Imp

Anonymous. Well, that solves it then.

And what's with the Kenny Loggins music?

But yes the similarity is undeniable. Congratulations Your Highness, you have gotten farther than anyone else in solving this mystery.

-Caleb

Don't mention it. I really would like to see a revival of popular reciting, especially by children.

V Reg et Imp

Thank you Queen Vic. http://www.alrunaspoetry.com is a lovely site.
I couldn't agree more that poetry should be encouraged in schools but the teacher that is sypathetic to poetry is very rare.
People nowadays think there is something wrong (as in weird) with you if you read poetry. I'm 66 now and read some poetry every day. It's good for the soul as is music!!

Not at all. Actually, I wasn't just talking about learning poetry by heart in schools (though I fully agree with you on that, and on the dismal attitude of too many soi-disant teachers to the subject), but really reciting it, out loud, in front of an audience, as used to be done in Victorian music halls (cf. Stanley Holloway, who parodied the art), at school prize-giving days, and after supper to the family and guests. Of course it entailed learning the poem in question, but that wasn't all it involved.

My reason was that - as I see it - poetry is essentially something to be spoken and heard. We all know that that's true historically (Beowulf, Homer...), and in the natural progress of a child from nursery rhymes to poetry (a natural progress surely not made enough of). But my argument goes deeper. So much of what is of the very essence in poetry - for example half-lines (corresponding to linguistic "tone-groups", and facilitating memory), assonance and alliteration, rhythm and rhyme - is so deeply tied up with the oral/aural foundation of poetry that without hearing and speaking it we will never realise what poetry is "about", what distinguishes it from prose, and what gives it much of its beauty, pathos, comedy or whatever.

For the purposes of recital by children (and of recital in front of the general public), one of course wants not only works with all of these oral qualities (rhythm, etc) in bucketloads, but also works with an extremely clear and obvious moral character (which can, obviously, be parodied). Kingsley Amis compiled an excellent book, the Faber Popular Reciter, of poems with the required qualities. It's out of print now, but here's the blurb, which gives a good idea of what it's like:

"Bumping pitches, blinding lights, white founts falling, jammed Gatlings, nine bean rows, grapes of wrath, books of verse, jugs of wine, the ranks of Tuscany, the day we French stormed Ratisbon.... They're all here. All the poems you've ever really enjoyed and which you can never remember properly. Kingsley Amis's magnificently entertaining anthology is already recognized as a classic."

V Reg et Imp

P.S. Does your lady friend read a monthly magazine called This England ? She may or may not appreciate its anti-European stand, and its celebration of an idyllic rural England that perhaps exists more in the imagination than it ever existed in fact, but I'm sure she would like its stupendous photographs and its regular Parlour Poetry pages, with questions and answers about half-remembered poems learnt by now elderly people in childhood.

On a related note, I wonder if any of your subscribers could supply the missing words from the following. It was first published in Private Eye in about 1970 (coincidentally, at roughly the same time as the facsimile of the original typescript of The Waste Land was published, with Eliot's manuscript corrections, crossings-out, etc), and is, of course, Lord Tennyson's first draft of the poem which was later to evolve, through successive rethinks, polishings-up and so forth, into that hauntingly beautiful masterpiece we all know and love so much, "Blow Bugles Blow".

XXXXXXX The funny old man sat on the wall,
XXXXXXX Playing with his willy.
XXXXXXX With such a long shake, his trouser-snake
XXXXXXX Was feeling rather chilly.
XXXXXXX "Blow, you buggers, blow! _________________ freezing."
XXXXXXX "Blow yourself", the actress said, teasing, teasing, teasing.

Normally, of course, I would have placed an enquiry in This England, but somehow it didn't seem suitable.

V Reg et Imp Indiae

Got it ! The full line reads:

XXXXXXX "Blow, you buggers, blow! Keep the thing from freezing!"

Note the masterly assonance and alliteration within each half-line, and the abrupt change to a more urgent tempo coincident with the caesura. I believe it is to one Peter Cooke, at the time a regular contributor to Private Eye, that we owe the discovery and preservation of this remarkable and moving fragment.

V Kaiser-i-Hind