Recently Johnson's ballad parody, 'I put my hat upon my head', turned up on this blog, apropos Marianne Moore's tin ear for meter. Browsing last night in a recent charity-shop purchase, The New Oxford Book of Light Verse – edited by Kingsley Amis – I came across it again, sandwiched between two other Johnson parodies. I particularly like the last one...
Epigram
If a man who turnips cries
Cry not when his father dies,
Is it not a proof he'd rather
Have a turnip than his father?
(from Burlesque of Lines by Lope de Vega)
Ballad
I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand.
(from Parodies of 'The Hermit of Warkworth')
Idyll
Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening grey,
Strike thy bosom, Sage, and tell
What is bliss, and which the way.
Thus I spoke, and speaking sighed,
Scarce repressed the starting tear,
When the hoary sage replied,
'Come, my lad, and drink some beer.'
(from Parody of Thomas Warton)
Thomas Warton, who became poet laureate in the year after Johnson's death, was best known for an early work, The Pleasures of Melancholy.
From the same anthology, I also enjoyed this one, in which John Betjeman applies the plodding Hiawatha meter to La Serenissima...
(To be read in a quiet New England accent)
Near the celebrated Lido where the breeze is fresh and free
Stands the ancient port of Venice called the City of the Sea
All its streets are made of water, all its homes are brick and stone
Yet it has a picturesqueness which is justly all its own
Here for centuries have artists come to see the vistas quaint
Here Bellini set his easel, herе he taught his School to paint
Here thе youthful Giorgione gazed upon the domes and towers
And interpreted his era in a way which pleases ours
A later artist, Tintoretto, also did his paintings here
Massive works which generations have continued to revere
Still to-day come modern artists to portray the buildings fair
And their pictures may be purchased on San Marco's famous Square
When the bell notes from the belfries and the campaniles chime
Still to-day we find Venetians elegantly killing time
In their gilded old palazzos, while the music in our ears
Is the distant band at Florians mixed with songs of gondoliers
Thus the New World meets the Old World and the sentiments expressed
Are melodiously mingled in my warm New England breast.
Sorry about the extraneous matter at the end of that post. I couldn't find a way to get rid of it.
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