The brown bee

This emerged recently, in a card I made for my mum over 50 years ago. At first we supposed it was my own composition, and I'm sorry I have to give up any claim on it. It turns out to be the first verse of "The Happy World" by William Brighty Rands (1823-1882), the "Laureate of the Nursery". He was the son of a Chelsea candlemaker, and from 1857-1875 a parliamentary reporter, like Charles Dickens before him (and David Copperfield). (Rands also wrote copious literary criticism and a two-volume Chaucer's England.)

Here's the whole poem:

The Happy World

                 The bee is a rover;
                        The brown bee is gay;
                 To feed on the clover,
                        He passes this way.
                 Brown bee, humming over,
                       What is it you say?
    "The world is so happy—so happy to-day!"

                 The martens have nested
                        All under the eaves;
                 The field-mice have jested
                        And played in the sheaves;
                 We have played, too, and rested,
                        And none of us grieves,
    All over the wide world, who is it that grieves?

(Found in Pinafore Palace, an anthology of verse for children compiled by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith, New York, 1907).

Probably my mum and I chose the poem together. She certainly played a large part in inspiring my chief work from that era, the reference book Birds (Age 6.4, I wrote on the title page) 

*

I pick up this thread of my literary remains in a teenage diary (aged about 14):

....................and when we get

    old, we'll travel to the

edge of the world

  (recalling young days)

       and stumble

          and tumble

     We're falling

     We're falling

          Floating . . ....

       Hjortron berries are

found in swamps and

marshes around lakes

and fishing backwaters

of the world, more

particularly Sweden.

They are the colour

of Autumn leaves, old foxes,

yellowish, russet but

gooseberry succulent, fustian

saffron, mottled, truffle-like,

in their treasured

scarcity, maple-syrupy.

Or perhaps they are none

of these. They are gold,

pale Swedish Gold, and

sometimes it reminds me of

you ....................

  Imagine lying in the 

Argentinian pampas, dry

and swaying and you

see the chinky secrets

between the blades and glades.....

  Imagine the northern

seas blowing and 

blustering at the

whaling ships proud

sails ............

  Imagine the heat of 

a gipsy fire, flaring

and flickering the women's

skirts .......

  Imagine -- no don't

imagine anything at 

all; it would restrict the

ideas if I specialised

-- such a clinical word,

I wish I hadn't used it

And what inspires me

to these lofty Årean 

heights?

  Don't blame me for

them. Blame Härjedalen,

or the girl who's

character is impressing

itself on every page of

this. Perhaps .........well,

I am only the journalist

of my emotions, aren't

I? 

*

Yup. Thereafter I stuck pretty exclusively to the topics of yearning and girls for the next decade at least. (Not sure if I've ever moved on, really.) 

Remember foolscap, that elongated paper size that was so dispiriting when you had to write school essays on it? I must have used a leftover piece for this concept album:

I must have been about 22 by then, and a postgrad.  

It wasn't until my late twenties that I started to write poems for any audience but myself. Here are five from the earliest batch:

*

You cannot be sure if the sea speaks.

Its mood is imperative.

"Primrose Haven."

Coal at dawn, pearl suspense:

Drop your pretence.

You etch away at a slate:

Fly across the grain.

Fear absorbs me. Plastered cliffs

Iron out those ready skiffs.

The waves close upon a vowel;

No cornflakes in this chopping bowl.

Vocabulary opaque, crow into silence.

*

Mist.

Make out the point on the deck

Where several streams meet.

It must be the early eighties again --

Oh flowery fell,

Blooms stuck in moss but that was fantasy.

The moss that grew upon that stone

Was parched and brittle.

My sister emptied a cup of water --

It sloped off, leaving a little to drink.

Pine needles dropped between my toes:

The clatter of double dragonflies

Rose out of the reeds.

Still that sun browsed above the trees,

Bringing the blueberry-pickers to their knees.

*

Coiled then unwound

Step all round this holy place

Passion, parturition,

The angels of this land.

Look skywards, fly your kite in space

Around the heavens, apply a glaze

To anywhere but the vase's base!

The clouds begin to drift apart

In sheltered spots, the orange light

Suggests imaginary warmth.

Those orange jellies on the gorse

Are something from my childhood.

Once they lived inside a wood

But now served cold, an aftercourse.

In the windiest January

I have come to a place without wind

Where small conifers in sombre shades

Are alight all round the edge with garden haloes.

*

Canterbury

Where all its spires and supermarkets yearn

& all its roads reach out, a carnival floats

& billows like a fleet of fishing boats

Asleep upon a sea of breath. Return;

Bell Harry's calm does not afflict these crowds.

Then the light fades & in the bookshop's back

Are girls dressed unassessably in black,

Post-Gothic, hair undyed, combed into clouds.

Their military silence seems like wit.

One of them loiters, pleasing, scornful-eyed,

To view an etching of the square outside:

The same, except the rooms are candle-lit.

In all its hatching winter is implied,

& evening -- like this evening -- dampens it. 

*

Burning flower

Waits for dawn

Radiance

The way you dance

Your legs, your absence