To a Goose
Robert Southey
Or waddle wide with flat and flabby feet
Over some Cambrian mountain's plashy moor;
Or find in farmer's yard a safe retreat
From gipsy thieves, and foxes sly and fleet;
If thy grey quills, by lawyer guided, trace
Deeds big with ruin to some wretched race,
Or love-sick poet's sonnet, sad and sweet,
Wailing the rigour of his lady fair;
Or if, the drudge of housemaid's daily toil,
Cobwebs and dust thy pinions white besoil,
Departed Goose! I neither know nor care.
But this I know, that thou wert very fine,
Season'd with sage and onions, and port wine.
I dislike this poem, but I'm coming to see it's not as terrible as I first thought. There's some care and artistry taken here to undercut the high-falutin' flights of fancy in the first 11 lines of the poem by the epigram of the last two lines. It's still pretty lightweight, even for comic verse, but it's not awful.
I'd like to offer my thanks the people who posted this poem so I could just copy/paste - The Wondering Minstrels, a brilliant blog that I seem to have unknowingly ripped off for the concept of these posts. Here's their description of the site:
A POEM A DAY, COMPLETE WITH ANALYSIS, CRITICISM, BIOGRAPHICAL INFO, LITERARY ANECDOTES, TRIVIA, AND OUR OWN SKEWED SENSE OF HUMOUR :-)
Remind you of anything? So if my daily ramblings aren't enough to slake your thirst for poesy and random fancies of an idle brain, you've now got an extra dose. You can bet I'll be there - their archives go back to 1999! The blog itself seems to be defunct, the most recent post is from 2007. But that's an awful lot of material.
God bless the Internets... every one!
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