Hilary, I love you

[poliphilo]

I'm walking round the house singing Kipling's A Tree Song to the tune Peter Bellamy wrote for it (one of the few songs I can sing without wobbling off into indescribable ugliness) but it doesn't help. The sun isn't coming up from the south- or anywhere else. It's stuck behind a cloud and the wind is bitter.

We had nice weather in London, but this is England and these past couple of days have been horrid cold.

Judy sends me a quote from Hilaire Belloc with an appended remark that condemns him as an effete Bloomsberry. I correct her for the nth time. Poor Belloc. On the cusp of adolescence I stayed in a holiday house down in Somerset which had shelves full of his stuff. This being England (see above) there were lots of wet afternoons- and me and Hilary curled up in an armchair together. Reader, I married him. Well, sort of. He's become one of those voices that are always there, whispering- or in his case harrumphing- inside my head. I love him for being so damn conflicted. A dogmatic catholic and an atheist, a libertarian and an elitist, a salon-haunting hater of high society, an Englishman and a Frenchman. It goes on and on. His best book is called The Four Men- and every one of them is himself and they walk the length of Sussex, bickering all the way.

And, of course, he was the finest comic poet of the 20th century.

Comments

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

"The sun isn't coming up from the south- or anywhere else."

Perhaps day after tomorrow it might just peek out a bit :-)
I think we'll be singing that song over & over on Saturday...I'm prepared for the earworm after-effects!

I'm unfamiliar with Belloc's work- might have to check him out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My fave Belloc poem- My dad used to read this to me when I was a kid. He wasn't a poetry person but for some reason he loved this. And quite right too.

TARANTELLA

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in --
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.