Walter's been Googlewhacked

..and Fforde's mad as hell and is just crazy enough to do this shit

My copy of stuff and nonsense

So my old chum Martin emails me and says:

‘There’s this poem running around in my head which I knew by heart when I was nine and I can’t find it anywhere on the internet and it begins: ‘My Good friend Lord O owned a parcel of land..’. Any ideas?

Well, yes, Mart, I do - and that’s very satisfying as I know exactly what it is, who wrote it and most of it by heart. It’s False Dawn by Walter de La Mare and I too go on the interwebs and despite Walt being a significant poet, there is virtually no mention of False Dawn, and certainly not the text of the poem in anywhere that a casual user can find. Lord O has been ipso facto Googlewhacked, and since little exists in this age unless on the web, this rather lovely and mildly disturbing poem had ceased to exist.

Only it hadn’t, of course. I had a copy of Stuff and Nonsense in the poem section of my library (yes, really) and there it was, pretty much as I remembered it. Now admittedly I have a lot of trouble with poetry as the words generally mean very little when I view them on the page - Ozymandias to me seems dead in the ink, but comes alive when read, so I call this a form of Poetical Aphasia. If you’ve ever read the lyrics on the back of an album cover (ask your grandparents what that means) and thought them rubbish then cried when you heard the same lyrics sung, you know what I mean.

So when poems do sing to me off the page I take especial notice. I retained this one after a single reading when I was twelve:

Art is long and Time is fleeting
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

Longfellow, Psalm of Life, and as a curious aside I nearly came to blows with someone over whether there should be an emphasis on ‘Still’ and a pause. Jury still out.

Here’s another, this time from Alfred Bester

Gully Foyle is my name
Terra is my Nation
Deep Space is my dwelling place
And death’s my destination

Anyhoo, Walter de La Mare (1873-1956) wrote a lot of poems. Like, a SHITLOAD, but is chiefly remembered for his children’s work, a couple of ghost stories and in particular The Listeners, which is well known to the casual poetry-reader and pops up quite often on Radio 4. But speaking to poets about poets, I felt Walt was always seen as lesser against his more famous peers, who either went half out of their minds on absinthe, liked long walks in the lakes or took imprudent trips on boats.

But Walt sang to me, not just with The Listeners, but also with False Dawn, so I upgraded my outrage factor from ‘Mildly Irked’ to ‘now just wait a goddamn minute here buster’ when I found that False Dawn was so lacking in appreciation there was not a single mention of it anywhere in Cyberspace that could be easily found, nor the text.

So here it is. You decide. After all, it’s highly relatable: Who hasn’t been to visit the house of a dead Peer only to find him still in residence?

My old friend, Lord O., owned a parcel of land­ -
A waste of wild dunes, rushes, marran and sand-
With a square Tudor mansion-not a bush, not a tree -
­Looking over salt flats a full league to the sea; 
     And at his demise he bequeathed it to me.

It was dusk as I entered, a gull to his mates
Cackled high in the air as I passed through the gates,
And out of the distance - full twenty miles wide -
Came the resonant boom of the incoming tide:
    Gulls’ scream and ground-swell, and nothing beside. 

In the cold of the porch I tugged at the bell, 
Till the bowels of the house echoed back like a knell. 
I hearkened; then peered through the hole in the lock; 
And a voice, cold and clammy, inquired, ‘Did you knock?’ 
     And there was Lord O. in his funeral smock. 

In silence he watched me, then led me upstairs 
To a room where a table stood, flanked by two chairs; 
For light but a dip, in an old silver stick, 
With guttering grease and a long unsnuffed wick; 
     And he said, ‘ If you’re hungry, eat quick.’ 

So I sipped his cold water and nibbled his bread, 
While he gazed softly out from the holes in his head :-
‘You would hardly believe, Brown, when once I was gone, 
How I craved for your company - where there is none; 
     Shivered and craved - on and on. 

‘This house, I agree, may seem cheerless to you; 
But glance from that window ! By Gad, what a view! 
And think, when we weary of darkness and rats, 
We can share the long night with the moon and the bats, 
     And wander for hours on those flats. 

‘And when in the East creeping daybreak shows wan, 
You’ll excuse me, I know, if I have to be gone, 
For as soon as sounds cock-crow, the red and the grey, 
It’s a rule with us all - even peers must obey -
     We all have to hasten away.’ 

So that is my fate now. The small hours draw near, 
We shall stalk arm-in-arm in that scenery drear ; 
Tete-a-tete by blanched breakers discuss on and on 
If it’s better to be flesh and blood or mere bone, 
      Till it’s time for Lord O. to be gone. 

Yet, doubtless he means well. I would not suggest 
To shun peers with property always is best. 
But insomnia, nightmare, tic-douloureux, cramp, 
Have reduced me to what’s little short of a scamp; 
For I’ve hung in my hen-roost a very large lamp. 
And now, well, at least two full hours before day, 
      Lord O., he hears cock-crow, the red and the grey, 
      Sighs; stares at the ocean-and hastens away. 

While he gazed softly out of the holes in his head

Jasper Fforde debuted on the NYT best seller list with ‘The Eyre Affair’ in 2001. Since then he has written sixteen other novels which some people say are amusing, satirical, and diverting. For balance, others say they are nothing of the sort. More info at www.jasperfforde.com

Latest publication: ‘Red Side Story’ USA/Canada and UK, 2024.

Next Publication: ‘Dark Reading Matter’ UK and Canada/USA, 2026

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