{"id":38449,"date":"2018-02-02T23:43:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T04:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=38449"},"modified":"2018-02-03T00:48:22","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T05:48:22","slug":"trinomial-poets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/trinomial-poets\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinomial poets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently there used to be a tradition in the blogosphere that one posted a favorite poem on February 2<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“A Nautical Ballad,” by Charles Edward Carryl<\/strong><\/p>\n

A capital ship for an ocean trip,
\nWas the ‘Walloping Window-Blind’;
\nNo gale that blew dismayed her crew
\nOr troubled the captain’s mind.
\nThe man at the wheel was taught to feel
\nContempt for the wildest blow,
\nAnd it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
\nThat he’d been in his bunk below.<\/p>\n

‘The boatswain’s mate was very sedate,
\nYet fond of amusement, too;
\nAnd he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
\nWhile the captain tickled the crew.
\nAnd the gunner we had was apparently mad,
\nFor he sat on the after rail,
\nAnd fired salutes with the captain’s boots,
\nIn the teeth of the booming gale.<\/p>\n

‘The captain sat in a commodore’s hat
\nAnd dined in a royal way
\nOn toasted pigs and pickles and figs
\nAnd gummery bread each day.
\nBut the cook was Dutch and behaved as such;
\nFor the diet he gave the crew
\nWas a number of tons of hot-cross buns
\nPrepared with sugar and glue.<\/p>\n

‘All nautical pride we laid aside,
\nAnd we cast the vessel ashore
\nOn the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
\nAnd the Rumbletumbunders roar.
\nAnd we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
\nAnd shot at the whistling bee;
\nAnd the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats
\nAs they danced in the sounding sea.<\/p>\n

‘On rubgub bark, from dawn to dark,
\nWe fed, till we all had grown
\nUncommonly shrunk, when a Chinese junk
\nCame by from the torriby zone.
\nShe was stubby and square, but we didn’t much care,
\nAnd we cheerily put to sea;
\nAnd we left the crew of the junk to chew
\nThe bark of the rubgub tree.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Eletelephony,” by Laura Elizabeth Richards<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once there was an elephant,
\nWho tried to use the telephant\u2014
\nNo! No! I mean an elephone
\nWho tried to use the telephone\u2014
\n(Dear me! I am not certain quite
\nThat even now I\u2019ve got it right.)
\nHowe\u2019er it was, he got his trunk
\nEntangled in the telephunk;
\nThe more he tried to get it free,
\nThe louder buzzed the telephee\u2014
\n(I fear I\u2019d better drop the song
\nOf elephop and telephong!)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some years later I discovered Lewis Carroll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading “Trinomial poets”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-a09","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38449"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42788,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38449\/revisions\/42788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}