Trinomial poets

Apparently there used to be a tradition in the blogosphere that one posted a favorite poem on February 2. Although I’ve been active online for over fifteen years now if you count the group blog I first posted on, I don’t remember that. However, it’s not a bad idea, so why not? There’s still about 30 minutes of Groundhog’s Day left.

The phrase “walloping window blind” popped into my mind recently. It occurred in a poem that I particularly liked when I was much shorter than I am today.

“A Nautical Ballad,” by Charles Edward Carryl

A capital ship for an ocean trip,
Was the ‘Walloping Window-Blind’;
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain’s mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he’d been in his bunk below.

‘The boatswain’s mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after rail,
And fired salutes with the captain’s boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.

‘The captain sat in a commodore’s hat
And dined in a royal way
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread each day.
But the cook was Dutch and behaved as such;
For the diet he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns
Prepared with sugar and glue.

‘All nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Rumbletumbunders roar.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.

‘On rubgub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk, when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn’t much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubgub tree.’

This brought to mind another poem from the same book. I thought this was hysterically funny when my age was in the middle single digits.

“Eletelephony,” by Laura Elizabeth Richards

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)
Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

Some years later I discovered Lewis Carroll.