Thursday, May 25, 2006

 
Nasty, British, and short? Humbert[say, wasn't that the name of some guy in "Lolita"?]Wolfe's Housman parody.....

(I can't read "nasty, brutish, and short" without thinking not so much of Thomas Hobbes, but "Calvin" the little kid of the old "Calvin & Hobbes" cartoon strip. Calvin did get beat up from time to time by a thugish bully. And like, no doubt others, memories of fights walked away from(not those won or lost), -even when it was the "right" thing to(i.e. when middle-aged and the opponent is younger, stronger and crazier than oneself)-still have some primal power to stir up some nasty thoughts and oaths -if there's a "next time", don't be such a coward; kill the bastard!) Ahem, slicing open a lighter vein:

From "The Brand -X Anthology Of Poetry" edited by William Zaranka, page 245:

When Lads Have Done

When lads have done with labor
in Shropshire, one will cry,
"Let's go and kill a neighbor,"
and t'other answers, "Aye!"

So this one kills his cousins,
and that one kills his dad;
and, as they hang by dozens
at Ludlow, lad by lad,

each one of them one-and-twenty,
all of them murderers,
the hangman mutters: Plenty
even for Housman's verse."

-same page by Hugh Kingsmill:

What, Still Alive

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl's, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won't be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.

So, when the split ink of the night,
Spreads o'er the blotting pad of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.