Do you still think that way about me now?

This Monday, I like... "A Man of Words and Not of Deeds".


Left hand image taken from Southwest Landscapes; right hand image taken from Aceros de Hispania


Ok, I know I said some time ago that Mondays were to be reserved for Nice Things Only so people may find today's choice rather odd, if not outright inappropriate. But "A Man of Words and Not of Deeds" is one of my favourite nursery rhymes. Yes, it creeps me out, but it creeps me out in a good way, in a weirdly reassuring way, like having a vivid dream about being a survivor in a post-apocalypse scenario...

I'm not explaining this very well, am I? I guess this rhyme appeals to the same part of me that adores angst in stories. Angst in real life can be draining, irritating and miserable, but in stories it can make you love characters even more than you thought you did already. It makes heroes more heroic, gives their sacrifices, actions and decisions more weight. (Another reason for liking Batman: everything the guy does oozes angst.) Angst in stories shows that being 'the good guy' is not easy and is therefore more important. "A Man of Words..." does something similar - not by focusing on the 'good guy', but instead zooming in on the 'bad guy' until he becomes not a mere person but an all-encompassing, inescapable, natural phenomenon. How are you supposed to defeat or defy something so big? Suddenly goodness is not a matter of just being 'nice' but an act of desperate necessity, of survival.

I love the imagery, the slow accumulation of similes as each one grows out of the one before. I like the way it starts so gently, so dreamily - and then takes that abrupt left-hand turn in the middle into much darker territory. And yes, I admit, I like the way it zeroes in so vividly on physical pain towards the end (touch of sadomasochism, anyone?).

And yes, I also admit, I like the fact that it's rather obscure and therefore more exclusive. I didn't know this rhyme as a child - that is, when I could count my age in single digits, which is when we traditionally become familiar with nursery rhymes. I heard it for the first time when I was around 10 or 12, maybe a bit older than that, on a cassette tape of other rhymes and songs. (Don't ask why a 10-to-12-year-old was listening to a tape of nursery rhymes; I just was, ok?) I knew all the other rhymes on the tape but this one was new to me and it captured my imagination. I suppose it helped that I was old enough to appreciate how clever the rhyme was, how 'literate' in comparison to, say, "Little Miss Muffett". Some people think that it might be the work of, or inspired by the work of, John Fletcher, an Elizabethan author and contemporary of Shakespeare, or that it might be a Puritan satire on Charles II. (You can google for more info on both theories; I'm not convinced by either, personally.)

Powerful. Vivid. Angst-ridden. Relatively unknown. And strangely appealing in its own ominous way. Yes. This Monday, whatever the reasons, I like "A Man of Words and Not of Deeds".

**

A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds -
And when the weeds begin to grow, it's like a garden full of snow -
And when the snow begins to fall, it's like a bird upon the wall -
And when the bird away does fly, it's like an eagle in the sky -
And when the sky begins to roar, it's like a lion at the door -
And when the door begins to crack, it's like a stick across your back -
And when your back begins to smart, it's like a penknife in your heart -
And when your heart begins to bleed
You're dead -
And dead -
And dead indeed.*


*The line layout and punctuation here are more or less of my own invention. Up until I wrote this post, I had only known this rhyme as recited orally, not written down, and when I went looking I wasn't satisfied by the way others had laid it out.

Anecdote no 1: A friend challenged William Cowper to write a poem celebrating the invention of the sofa. The poem eventually ran to 5000 lines and six books. Only the first ostensibly deals with the sofa, and the sixth book ends with the Second Coming.

Anecdote number 2: When two farm labourers who were to be married were killed by a lightning strike, Alexander Pope wrote two different, but equally sentimental and heroic, epitaphs for them:

ON TWO LOVERS STRUCK DEAD BY LIGHTNING.

When Eastern lovers feed the funeral fire,
On the same pile the faithful pair expire.
Here pitying Heaven that virtue mutual found,
And blasted both, that it might neither wound.
Hearts so sincere, the Almighty saw well pleased,
Sent his own lightning, and the victims seized.

and:

NEAR THIS PLACE LIE THE BODIES OF
JOHN HEWET AND SARAH DREW,
AN INDUSTRIOUS YOUNG MAN,
AND VIRTUOUS MAIDEN OF THIS PARISH;
WHO, BEING AT HARVEST-WORK
(WITH SEVERAL OTHERS),
WERE IN ONE INSTANT KILLED BY LIGHTNING,
THE LAST DAY OF JULY 1718.

Think not, by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire;
Victims so pure Heaven saw well pleased,
And snatch'd them in celestial fire.

Live well, and fear no sudden fate;
When God calls virtue to the grave,
Alike 'tis justice soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save.

Virtue unmoved can hear the call,
And face the flash that melts the ball.

More privately, however, he also wrote this:

Here lye two poor Lovers, who had the mishap,
Tho very chaste people, to die of a Clap.

---

I had a dream last night, but I've forgotten it now. It involved some sort of crime fighting/government agency, I think.