swirl round villages, hamlets, thorpes,
As the cottagers flee for life:
Then I fling the fisherman’s flaccid corpse
At the feet of the fisherman’s wife.
T. BAKER
(fl. 1850s)
N othing is known of T. Baker, reports D. B. Wyndham Lewis, who rediscovered the poet’s work, “except the fact that he was inexhaustibly impressed by the powers of steam”—so much so that Baker wrote a two-hundred-page poem on the steam engine.
from
The Steam Engine
Canto IV
Lord Stanhope hit upon a novel plan
Of bringing forth this vast Leviathan
(This notion first Genevois’ genius struck);
His frame was made to emulate the duck;
Webb’d feet had he, in Ocean’s brine to play;
With whale-like might he whirl’d aloft to spray;
But made with all this splash little speed;
Alas! the duck was doom’d not to succeed!
The Most Convoluted Syntax
W hen in doubt, the very bad poet will commit any syntactical sin imaginable to make a line rhyme—as in the masterpiece excerpted below.
from
On a Procession with the Prince of Wales
by
Joseph Gwyer
At evening too the dazzled light
Illumed the darkness of the night
I can’t paint it for reasons best.
’Twas grand, though I in crowd was pressed.
SAMUEL BENTLY
(fl. 1760s)
L ittle is known of Samuel Bently except that he penned the following poem on the death of the Reverend Dean, whose demise one author calls “one of the least moving in literature.”
from
The River Dove: A Lyric Pastoral
Yet here, tho’ amusing the Sight,
With Tears the poor Dean * I will mourn;
Who climb’d up this steep, dizzy Height,
By Ways he cou’d never return:
Ah! Why did you ride up so high?
From whence all unheard sing the Birds,
Conduct a Fair Lady: Ah, why!
Where scarce is a Path for the Herds?
How shriek’d the hoarse Ravens a Knell!
When vain, and quite useless the Rein,
All headlong together down fell,
The Horse, the poor Lady, and Dean:
The Lady, by lace-braided Hair
Entangl’d in Brambles was found,
Suspend’d in Brambles was found,
Suspended unhurt in mid-air;
The Dean met his Death with the Ground.
* The Reverend Dean
Langton
and Miss
La Roache,
who were on a visit to Wenman Cokes, Esq., at
Longford,
and went to entertain themselves with a sight of
Dove-dale,
where the Dean was unfortunately killed while attempting to reach the top of one of the rocks, with the lady on the same horse; the lady was saved by the hair of her head being entangled in some bushes.
MRS. MARION ALBINA BIGELOW
(fl 1850s)
A n American poet with a penchant for the melancholy, Mrs. Marion Albina Bigelow was a regular contributor to several periodical columns, turning out poems with bleak titles such as “Two Smothered Children.” Of the nearly three hundred poems she wrote, a large number were elegies, often crammed with clinical descriptions of a dying person’s last minutes, as in these lines from her poem “Ellen”:
Cold clammy sweats were glistening on her brow;
Wild with delirium long she struggled there.
Bigelow’s depressing outlook (attributed to all her brothers dying from consumption) apparently found an appreciative audience. In fact, the editor of her book of collected poems,
Songs of the St. Lawrence,
found fit to proudly state that “the author is wholly incapable of levity and the reader will find nothing of it in any of her productions.”
from
Children Disinterred
Suggested by seeing four children disinterred, and placed by the side of their mother
Come, lowly ones, and take your places now
Beside the mother, who so long had wept,
Had mourn’d your absence with an aching brow,
And eyes that stream’d with tears while others wept.…
….
Come, gather round her now! she had not thought
To see you leave again your mossy tomb—
But ye are rising from that sacred spot;
The turf is broken—one by one ye come!
Two Smothered Children
Theirs was not the peaceful death-bed,
Where affection’s silent tears,
O’er the couch of pain fast falling,
Blend with
As the cottagers flee for life:
Then I fling the fisherman’s flaccid corpse
At the feet of the fisherman’s wife.
T. BAKER
(fl. 1850s)
N othing is known of T. Baker, reports D. B. Wyndham Lewis, who rediscovered the poet’s work, “except the fact that he was inexhaustibly impressed by the powers of steam”—so much so that Baker wrote a two-hundred-page poem on the steam engine.
from
The Steam Engine
Canto IV
Lord Stanhope hit upon a novel plan
Of bringing forth this vast Leviathan
(This notion first Genevois’ genius struck);
His frame was made to emulate the duck;
Webb’d feet had he, in Ocean’s brine to play;
With whale-like might he whirl’d aloft to spray;
But made with all this splash little speed;
Alas! the duck was doom’d not to succeed!
The Most Convoluted Syntax
W hen in doubt, the very bad poet will commit any syntactical sin imaginable to make a line rhyme—as in the masterpiece excerpted below.
from
On a Procession with the Prince of Wales
by
Joseph Gwyer
At evening too the dazzled light
Illumed the darkness of the night
I can’t paint it for reasons best.
’Twas grand, though I in crowd was pressed.
SAMUEL BENTLY
(fl. 1760s)
L ittle is known of Samuel Bently except that he penned the following poem on the death of the Reverend Dean, whose demise one author calls “one of the least moving in literature.”
from
The River Dove: A Lyric Pastoral
Yet here, tho’ amusing the Sight,
With Tears the poor Dean * I will mourn;
Who climb’d up this steep, dizzy Height,
By Ways he cou’d never return:
Ah! Why did you ride up so high?
From whence all unheard sing the Birds,
Conduct a Fair Lady: Ah, why!
Where scarce is a Path for the Herds?
How shriek’d the hoarse Ravens a Knell!
When vain, and quite useless the Rein,
All headlong together down fell,
The Horse, the poor Lady, and Dean:
The Lady, by lace-braided Hair
Entangl’d in Brambles was found,
Suspend’d in Brambles was found,
Suspended unhurt in mid-air;
The Dean met his Death with the Ground.
* The Reverend Dean
Langton
and Miss
La Roache,
who were on a visit to Wenman Cokes, Esq., at
Longford,
and went to entertain themselves with a sight of
Dove-dale,
where the Dean was unfortunately killed while attempting to reach the top of one of the rocks, with the lady on the same horse; the lady was saved by the hair of her head being entangled in some bushes.
MRS. MARION ALBINA BIGELOW
(fl 1850s)
A n American poet with a penchant for the melancholy, Mrs. Marion Albina Bigelow was a regular contributor to several periodical columns, turning out poems with bleak titles such as “Two Smothered Children.” Of the nearly three hundred poems she wrote, a large number were elegies, often crammed with clinical descriptions of a dying person’s last minutes, as in these lines from her poem “Ellen”:
Cold clammy sweats were glistening on her brow;
Wild with delirium long she struggled there.
Bigelow’s depressing outlook (attributed to all her brothers dying from consumption) apparently found an appreciative audience. In fact, the editor of her book of collected poems,
Songs of the St. Lawrence,
found fit to proudly state that “the author is wholly incapable of levity and the reader will find nothing of it in any of her productions.”
from
Children Disinterred
Suggested by seeing four children disinterred, and placed by the side of their mother
Come, lowly ones, and take your places now
Beside the mother, who so long had wept,
Had mourn’d your absence with an aching brow,
And eyes that stream’d with tears while others wept.…
….
Come, gather round her now! she had not thought
To see you leave again your mossy tomb—
But ye are rising from that sacred spot;
The turf is broken—one by one ye come!
Two Smothered Children
Theirs was not the peaceful death-bed,
Where affection’s silent tears,
O’er the couch of pain fast falling,
Blend with
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