Tag: history

Ode To Miss Mary Bennet

Miss Mary Bennet, life’s middle child:

Dour, unremarked and, by choosing, unstyled.

Watching your sisters play whist in their pairs

Consigned to their shadows, resigned to your prayers.

Oh, to be Jane! The most prized of them all

Who turned every head at the Netherfield Ball.

Or Lizzy, who routs senseless suitors through wit

Delighting your father more than he’d admit.

Would you be like Kitty who follows the crowd?

Or Lydia, brash and unsuitably loud?

Alas, those sweet psalms you impart by the dozen

Did fail in the end to secure you a cousin

And having entailed the estate to a son

The Bennets have lost and the Collins have won.

And so, dearest Mary, were God so to judge

Will your role be that of your poor mother’s drudge?

Or is your intended more than a mere dream

Who’s destined to save you as part of His scheme?

Now, blow out the candle and softly to bed

Let sleep chase such worriment out of your head.

And judge not too harshly, as you’re wont to do

For, one day our eyes may be turned toward you.

Over, Lord

I bade my love compose an ode

To prove her heart was true,

Reciting To Him All Is Owed

She blushed the whole way through.

I bade my love prepare a feast

Befitting of her Lord,

She cooked for me the finest beast

Her dowry would afford.

I bade my love take out a boat

And clear the moat of trolls,

She took my dagger to their throats

Then fixed their heads on poles.

I bade my love tend to my aches

With liniments and oils,

She rid my skin of every flake

And lanced a string of boils.

Then comes a time when passions end

When leaves droop with the frost,

I bade my love invite her friend

That’s when she said… Get lost!

Heir Heads

While William and Kate keep tabs on what Meghan and Harry might do next, Princess Anne continues to lurk among the shadows. An examination of this royal princess isn’t for the squeamish, for while it’s true she is indeed very hard working, the same can be said of fire ants. For her Duke of Edinburgh Award, it’s rumoured a young Anne commissioned a wind-up doll capable of neutralising any lady-in-waiting who approached her without curtseying. Brooding and aloof as a teenager, an awkward Anne had clung to the fact that she remained the only princess in a stable of princes.

That is, until Diana appeared on the scene, which added up to one princess too many.

Dispatching her sister-in-law abroad in a stroke of genius, Anne next fixed her sights upon the latest interloper: Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales. Rumour has it that during Kate’s initial stay at Kensington Palace, Anne presented her with a Princess Diana doll sans tête. Examining it thoughtfully, if not warily, the young Kate made a mental note of her nearest exit.

“She was pretty like you,” Princess Anne remarked, “but she’s not pretty now… I’m the pretty princess now.”

“Isn’t she missing something?” Kate asked, pointedly.

“My bad,” Anne smirked, crushing her can of Pilsner and flicking it at her. “There’s the car.”

St George’s Dei

God is an Englishman

He wears a bowler hat

He gave us brollies for the rain so folk can stop to chat.

His favourite meal is fish & chips and if he’s staying in

He likes to watch the cricket, eating biscuits out the tin.

He cheers on Blackburn Rovers and when in The Great Beyond

He drives an Aston Martin, telling angels: “Call me Bond.”

He sent us earthly kings and queens to reign on his behalf

Then sent The Benny Hill Show to make everybody laugh.

God is an Englishman

Sublime and yet absurd

A marvel we commemorate each April 23rd.

Everyone’s a Critic

In ancient Athens, lived a man who did not suffer fools

Who scorned the rich and powerful, disparaging their rules.

Renouncing laws and social norms from which he felt exempt

Diogenes The Cynic viewed convention with contempt.

He called an earthen jar his home, forgoing earthly goods

Promoting a philosophy which few Greeks understood:

We need not work! Food should be free!

We’ve been robbed of our liberty!

A dog needs only food and sleep

So, worry not about your keep!

Revolting, in more ways than one, he never bathed and took great fun

In mocking local passersby unlucky to have caught his eye.

Once Philip, King of Macedon, discovered what was going on

He fetched him from the marketplace to meet this heckler, face to face.

Philosopher, comedian, Diogenes first drew him in

Then seized the moment to berate the trappings of the civil state.

The king considered all he’d heard and pledged Diogenes his word

That he would try to make life fair for all his subjects everywhere.

Then Philip’s son, the Late & Great, who relished seminal debate

Next headed for the rebel’s lair to bump heads in the open air.

Soon Alexander found the spot and asked Diogenes his thoughts

On justice, kings and slavery to test his rival’s bravery.

Diogenes, quite unafraid, lamented: We have been betrayed.

The reason for our very birth is to enjoy fruits of the earth.

Young Alex, in your palaces, you drink from golden chalices

While I do nicely in this jar… am I no better than you are?

And now you claim to be divine, directly drawn from Zeus’s line

Yet, as I spy your horse nearby I fear, like you, it cannot fly.

The Great One knew he’d met his match, aware that he would never catch

A cynic who cared not for kings, nor for the folly each reign brings.

Amused, young Alex asked his host which thing in life he wished for most:

Was it a wife? Slaves of his own? Or simply to be left alone?

Reclining in the summer breeze, his eyes now closed, Diogenes

Admitted there was only one: for Alex not to block the sun.

Grime Scene

When Carter’s party found the tomb

Of Pharaoh King Tutankhamun

They gazed upon the scene with some dismay

At cups and bowls strewn all about

Discarded clothes, some inside-out

In random piles of total disarray.

Add rotting fruit, some moldy bread,

Old board games found beneath the bed

And robbery was feared with utter gloom.

Though if he’d had a son, or two

He would have known, as parents do

That’s how most teenage boys will leave a room.

Off The Scale

We sprang from a primordial soup

Of RNA and cosmic goop

We breathed through gills and swam in schools

Among the depths and rocky pools

Bedazzling, streamlined, clad in scales

Propelled by tails with fins for sails.

Until one day, so goes the lore

We cast a fishy eye to shore

And surfed the tide across the sand

To where the water meets the land.

Not ones to walk, we lacked technique

All thanks to our unique physique

But in the end we found our feet

Soon after, gills were obsolete.

Yet, Evolution is perverse

And sometimes throws it in reverse…

For, now we’ve waterparks with slides

We snorkel, sail and scuba dive

We swim with dolphins, live on boats

And teach our small fry how to float.

Tots splash in puddles with delight

While summer’s one long water fight

Still, others love the touch of rain

But when asked Why? they can’t explain.

We left a world now out of reach

The day we clambered up that beach

The price of such a compromise?

This constant need to moisturize.