Text 43

INTRODUCTION

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'

So I piped with merry cheer.

'Piper, pipe that song again;'

So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe;

Sing thy song of happy cheer:'

So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read.'

So he vanish'd from my sight,

And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain'd the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

Blake was inspired by the ideas of the American and French revolutions. His imagination was inflamed by them. In his epic poems, he portrayed the American revolution of Spirit bringing the day closer when the peoples of the world, fair-skinned and dark-skinned alike, will be re-united in one family. In Russia, the name of Blake was first mentioned in print in 1834: a translation from an English magazine portrayed Blake, according to widespread opinion of the day, as a madman. Balmont and Marshak translated Blake, as well as did other authors (see Text 05).

4.3 Lear ical verses

The founding father of eccentric children's poetry is perhaps Edward Lear (1812—1883). Despite the fact that he was always eager to give enjoyment to others, Lear himself had a hard and rather melancholy life. It began all wrong, with a childhood compounded of loneliness, neglect and illness. Born in 1812, he was the twentieth child in a family that was finally to number 21, so his parents had little affection for him.

Edward was a child of delicate health, very short-sighted, and subject to attacks of epilepsy. He earned his living for the rest of his life as a self-taught landscape artist. He even gave lessons to Princess Victoria once! Since 1837 he led the life of a traveler – that 'hurried, bushy life'. He never married and had no real home for more than 30 years. In a way, he was, as Blake put it, a nobodaddy.

There was an Old Man with a gong,

Who bumped at it all day long;

But they called out, 'O law!

You're a horrid old bore!'

So they smashed that Old Man with a gong.

His first volume of nonsensical poetry, A Book of Nonsense (1842), was published anonymously. A quarter of a century later Lear wrote to Lady Waldegrave:

"My dear Lady Waldgrave, − It is often could here, and I don't know what to do. I think I shall go to Jibberolter, passing through Spain. After all, one isn't a potato − to remain always in one place. A few days ago in a railway as I went to my sister's a gentleman explained to two ladies, (whose children had my Book Of Nonsense,) that thousands of families were grateful to the author (which in silence I agreed to) who was not generally known – but was really Lord Derby (…). Says I, joining spontaneous in the conversation − "That is quite a mistake: I have reason to know that Edward Lear the painter and author wrote and illustrated the whole book."

"And I,' says the Gentleman, says he − 'have good reason to know Sir, that you are wholly mistaken. There is no such person as Edward Lear. "But', says I, 'there is −and I am the man −and I wrote the book!' Whereon all the party burst out laughing and evidently thought me mad or telling fibs. So I took off my hat and showed it all around, with Edward Lear and the address in large letters − also one of my cards and a pocket handkerchief: on which amazement devoured those benighted individuals and I left them to gnash their teeth in trouble and tumult".

Uniquely Lear ical character of Lear's writing, all as jumbly as can be, is characteristically English, and is rooted deep in the literary tradition. It creates a kind of a topsy-turvy, madly fascinating world (Text 44).