Dancing by the Light of the Moon Read online

  Christopher told me that, until he was eight or nine, he ‘quite liked being famous’. He corresponded with his fans, made public appearances, even made a record. ‘It was exciting and made me feel grand and important.’ He felt differently when he went away to boarding school where he was teased and bullied. He learnt to box to defend himself. He came to despise the boy in the books called ‘Christopher Robin’. He had a particular loathing of the child depicted in ‘Vespers’, the poem that begins:

  Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,

  Droops on the little hands little gold head.

  ‘I vividly recall how intensely painful it was to sit in my study at Stowe while my neighbours played the famous – now cursed – gramophone record remorselessly over and over again. Eventually I took the record and broke it into a hundred fragments and scattered them over a distant field.’

  That’s why I’m not suggesting you learn ‘Vespers’. I am hoping you might learn these two instead. The rhythm and the rhymes make them easy to learn and perfect to perform to little ones, however small.

  Sneezles

  by A. A. Milne

  (1882–1956)

  Christopher Robin

  Had wheezles

  And sneezles,

  They bundled him

  Into

  His bed.

  They gave him what goes

  With a cold in the nose,

  And some more for a cold

  In the head.

  They wondered

  If wheezles

  Could turn

  Into measles,

  If sneezles

  Would turn

  Into mumps;

  They examined his chest

  For a rash,

  And the rest

  Of his body for swellings and lumps.

  They sent for some doctors

  In sneezles

  And wheezles

  To tell them what ought

  To be done.

  All sorts and conditions

  Of famous physicians

  Came hurrying round

  At a run.

  They all made a note

  Of the state of his throat,

  They asked if he suffered from thirst;

  They asked if the sneezles

  Came after the wheezles,

  Or if the first sneezle

  Came first.

  They said, ‘If you teazle

  A sneezle

  Or wheezle,

  A measle

  May easily grow.

  But humour or pleazle

  The wheezle

  Or sneezle,

  The measle

  Will certainly go.’

  They expounded the reazles

  For sneezles

  And wheezles,

  The manner of measles

  When new.

  They said ‘If he freezles

  In draughts and in breezles,

  Then PHTHEEZLES

  May even ensue.’

  Christopher Robin

  Got up in the morning,

  The sneezles had vanished away.

  And the look in his eye

  Seemed to say to the sky,

  ‘Now, how to amuse them to-day?’

  The King’s Breakfast

  by A. A. Milne

  The King asked

  The Queen, and

  The Queen asked

  The Dairymaid:

  ‘Could we have some butter for

  The Royal slice of bread?’

  The Queen asked the Dairymaid,

  The Dairymaid

  Said, ‘Certainly,

  I’ll go and tell

  The cow

  Now

  Before she goes to bed.’

  The Dairymaid

  She curtsied,

  And went and told

  The Alderney:

  ‘Don’t forget the butter for

  The Royal slice of bread.’

  The Alderney

  Said sleepily:

  ‘You’d better tell

  His Majesty

  That many people nowadays

  Like marmalade

  Instead.’

  The Dairymaid

  Said, ‘Fancy!’

  And went to

  Her Majesty.

  She curtsied to the Queen, and

  She turned a little red:

  ‘Excuse me,

  Your Majesty,

  For taking of

  The liberty,

  But marmalade is tasty, if

  It’s very

  Thickly

  Spread.’

  The Queen said

  ‘Oh!’

  And went to

  His Majesty:

  ‘Talking of the butter for

  The Royal slice of bread,

  Many people

  Think that

  Marmalade

  Is nicer.

  Would you like to try a little

  Marmalade

  Instead?’

  The King said,

  ‘Bother!’

  And then he said,

  ‘Oh, deary me!’

  The King sobbed, ‘Oh, deary me!’

  And went back to bed.

  ‘Nobody,’

  He whimpered,

  ‘Could call me

  A fussy man;

  I only want

  A little bit

  Of butter for

  My bread!’

  The Queen said,

  ‘There, there!’

  And went to

  The Dairymaid.

  The Dairymaid

  Said, ‘There, there!’

  And went to the shed.

  The cow said,

  ‘There, there!

  I didn’t really

  Mean it;

  Here’s milk for his porringer,

  And butter for his bread.’

  The Queen took

  The butter

  And brought it to

  His Majesty;

  The King said,

  ‘Butter, eh?’

  And bounced out of bed.

  ‘Nobody,’ he said,

  As he kissed her

  Tenderly,

  ‘Nobody,’ he said,

  As he slid down the banisters,

  ‘Nobody,

  My darling,

  Could call me

  A fussy man –

  BUT

  I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!’

  2. ‘Then the whining schoolboy’

  Here are two of my children’s favourites by two of America’s most popular children’s poets:

  Please Mrs Butler

  by Allan Ahlberg

  (born 1938)

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps copying my work, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Go and sit in the hall, dear.

  Go and sit in the sink.

  Take your books on the roof, my lamb.

  Do whatever you think.

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps taking my rubber, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Keep it in your hand, dear.

  Hide it up your vest.

  Swallow it if you like, love.

  Do what you think best.

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps calling me rude names, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Lock yourself in the cupboard, dear.

  Run away to sea.

  Do whatever you can, my flower.

  But don’t ask me!

  Today Is Very Boring

  by Jack Prelutsky

  (born 1940)

  Today is very boring,

  it’s a very boring day,

  there is nothing much to look at,

  there is nothing much to say,

  there’s a peacock on my sneakers,

  there’s a p
enguin on my head,

  there’s a dormouse on my doorstep,

  I am going back to bed.

  Today is very boring,

  it is boring through and through,

  there is absolutely nothing

  that I think I want to do,

  I see giants riding rhinos,

  and an ogre with a sword,

  there’s a dragon blowing smoke rings,

  I am positively bored.

  Today is very boring,

  I can hardly help but yawn,

  there’s a flying saucer landing

  in the middle of my lawn,

  a volcano just erupted

  less than half a mile away,

  and I think I felt an earthquake,

  it’s a very boring day.

  Next up are two very different poems reflecting different aspects of childhood.

  The first is by Eleanor Farjeon, an English girl from a literary family who was educated at home and was so painfully shy that she spent much of her childhood hidden up in the attic, reading and (from the age of five) writing. She had three brothers.

  I quarreled with my brother

  by Eleanor Farjeon

  (1881–1965)

  I quarreled with my brother,

  I don’t know what about,

  One thing led to another

  And somehow we fell out.

  The start of it was slight,

  The end of it was strong,

  He said he was right,

  I knew he was wrong!

  We hated one another.

  The afternoon turned black.

  Then suddenly my brother

  Thumped me on the back,

  And said, ‘Oh, come on!

  We can’t go on all night –

  I was in the wrong.’

  So he was in the right.

  James Mercer Langston Hughes was a twentieth-century American poet, playwright, novelist and activist, who moved to New York City from Joplin, Missouri, when he was young. He was a pioneer of what came to be known as ‘jazz poetry’ and was part of the Harlem Renaissance when, as he put it, ‘the negro was in vogue’.

  Merry-Go-Round

  Colored child

  at carnival

  by Langston Hughes

  (1901–67)

  Where is the Jim Crow section

  On this merry-go-round,

  Mister, cause I want to ride?

  Down South where I come from

  White and colored

  Can’t sit side by side.

  Down South on the train

  There’s a Jim Crow car.

  On the bus we’re put in the back –

  But there ain’t no back

  To a merry-go-round!

  Where’s the horse

  For a kid that’s black?

  And here are two poems about sons and their fathers. The first is by Theodore Roethke, a twentieth-century American poet (and revered teacher of poetry) from Michigan, whose father was a German immigrant.

  My Papa’s Waltz

  by Theodore Roethke

  (1908–63)

  The whiskey on your breath

  Could make a small boy dizzy;

  But I hung on like death:

  Such waltzing was not easy.

  We romped until the pans

  Slid from the kitchen shelf;

  My mother’s countenance

  Could not unfrown itself.

  The hand that held my wrist

  Was battered on one knuckle;

  At every step you missed

  My right ear scraped a buckle.

  You beat time on my head

  With a palm caked hard by dirt,

  Then waltzed me off to bed

  Still clinging to your shirt.

  There is a touching passage in A. A. Milne’s autobiography (entitled, tellingly, It’s Too Late Now) where Milne reflects on his own relationship with his father and anatomizes the ‘life-long process of saying goodbye’. He pictures himself as a schoolboy approaching his teens, bidding his father farewell: ‘From now on we shall begin to grow out of each other. I shall be impatient, but you will be patient with me; unloving, but you will not cease to love me. “Well,” you will tell yourself, “it lasted until he was twelve; they grow up and resent our care for them, they form their own ideas, and think ours old-fashioned. It is natural.”’

  Cecil Day-Lewis is best known for being Britain’s Poet Laureate (from 1968 to 1972, between John Masefield and John Betjeman), for writing detective stories under the name Nicholas Blake, and for being the father of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. This poem is about Sean, Day-Lewis’s son from his first marriage. Sean was born in 1931 and the poem was written in 1956.

  Walking Away

  by Cecil Day-Lewis

  (1904–72)

  It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –

  A sunny day with leaves just turning,

  The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play

  Your first game of football, then, like a satellite

  Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

  Behind a scatter of boys. I can see

  You walking away from me towards the school

  With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

  Into a wilderness, the gait of one

  Who finds no path where the path should be.

  That hesitant figure, eddying away

  Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,

  Has something I never quite grasp to convey

  About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching

  Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

  I have had worse partings, but none that so

  Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly

  Saying what God alone could perfectly show –

  How selfhood begins with a walking away,

  And love is proved in the letting go.

  3. ‘Then the lover’

  These aren’t poems to learn and perform to your beloved: you will find those in Chapter Twelve on page 242. These are nine poems, presented in chronological order, that explore the bitter-sweet nature of love and the not-always-easy reality of the lover’s lot.

  The Sun Rising

  by John Donne

  (1572–1631)

  Busy old fool, unruly sun,

  Why dost thou thus,

  Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

  Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

  Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

  Late school boys and sour prentices,

  Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,

  Call country ants to harvest offices,

  Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

  Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

  Thy beams, so reverend and strong

  Why shouldst thou think?

  I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

  But that I would not lose her sight so long:

  If her eyes have not blinded thine,

  Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

  Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine

  Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.

  Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,

  And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

  She’s all states, and all princes, I,

  Nothing else is.

  Princes do but play us; compared to this,

  All honour’s mimic; all wealth alchemy.

  Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

  In that the world’s contracted thus;

  Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

  To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

  Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

  This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

  When We Two Parted

  by George Gordon, Lord Byron

 
(1788–1824)

  When we two parted

  In silence and tears,

  Half broken-hearted

  To sever for years,

  Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

  Colder thy kiss;

  Truly that hour foretold

  Sorrow to this.

  The dew of the morning

  Sunk chill on my brow –

  It felt like the warning

  Of what I feel now.

  Thy vows are all broken,

  And light is thy fame;

  I hear thy name spoken,

  And share in its shame.

  They name thee before me,

  A knell to mine ear;

  A shudder comes o’er me –

  Why wert thou so dear?

  They know not I knew thee,

  Who knew thee too well: –

  Long, long shall I rue thee,

  Too deeply to tell.

  In secret we met –

  In silence I grieve,

  That thy heart could forget,

  Thy spirit deceive.

  If I should meet thee

  After long years,

  How should I greet thee! –

  With silence and tears.

  Unfortunate Coincidence

  by Dorothy Parker

  (1893–1967)

  By the time you swear you’re his,

  Shivering and sighing,

  And he vows his passion is

  Infinite, undying –

  Lady, make a note of this:

  One of you is lying.

  Social Note

  by Dorothy Parker

  Lady, lady, should you meet

  One whose ways are all discreet,

  One who murmurs that his wife

  Is the lodestar of his life,

  One who keeps assuring you

  That he never was untrue,

  Never loved another one …

  Lady, lady, better run!

  A Subaltern’s Love-song

  by John Betjeman

  (1906–84)

  Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,

  Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,

  What strenuous singles we played after tea,

  We in the tournament – you against me!

  Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,

  The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,

  With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,

  I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

  Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,

  How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,