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It's awesome to return to this. For the longest time I didn't have a copy. When I was a kid, my favorite poem was this one:
"The Lion
The lion just adores to eat
A lot of red and tender meat,
And if you ask the lion what
Is much the tenderest of the lot,
He will not say a roast of lamb
Or curried beef or devilled ham
Or crispy pork or corned beef hash
Or sausages or mutton mash.
Then could it be a big plump hen?
He answers no. What is it, then?
Oh, lion dear, could I not make
You happy with a lovely steak?
Could I entice you from your lair
With rabbit-pie or roasted hare?
The lion smiled and shook his head.
He came up very close and said,
'The meat I am about to chew
Is neither steak nor chops. IT'S YOU!'"
Aside from nursery rhymes, it's the first poem I ever memorized—to recite in front of the class in fourth grade.
Now that I'm reading Going Solo, Dahl's autobiography (part two), I see where so much of this comes from! For example, his first published piece (for a newspaper) was about a woman who was carried away by a lion, and everyone was panicking and trying to shoot the lion, or at least catch up with it. But when the lion startled and ran off, dropping the woman, there wasn't a scratch on her, and she was laughing. Supposedly he saw it happen. There's a recurring theme of dangerous animals, and flying—both of which feature prominently in Going Solo.
I remember wondering how he made the poems so good. They felt right! Right? What was the trick? Maybe they're super silly, but read aloud, they've got a nice ring. As an adult, I have a clue or two what's going on, but I still enjoy the poems. Part of the secret is just... well, nursery rhymes. All the poems follow the same meter—"common meter" or "iambic tetrameter." That's four stresses per line, 8 syllables in all, and iambs. So the rhythm is like "enough enough enough enough," and it chugs away. There are very few deviations, and they're minor and momentary, maybe an extra syllable or a flipped stress. This much consistency could make them dull, but it doesn't.
It sounds classic. The verses are well-written for the purpose and work just like most songs and nursery rhymes, following the "Eenie, meenie, miny, moe" pattern, only, well, the stresses are all backwards from that. So... it's kind of like a nursery rhyme, but backwards. Apropos, no? Oh, and like your average song, as you noticed, the poems pair lines up in rhyming couplets.
Just now, I was looking for a nursery rhyme to give as an example of common meter / iambic tetrameter, and there just don't seem to be many. But here's one I've never heard before: "A man whose name was Johnny Sands..." That's so much less interesting as a beginning than "No animal is half so vile..."! Usually nursery rhymes are more like "Eenie, meenie, miny, moe" or "Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater..." Not "The lion just adores to eat..."
"The Lion
The lion just adores to eat
A lot of red and tender meat,
And if you ask the lion what
Is much the tenderest of the lot,
He will not say a roast of lamb
Or curried beef or devilled ham
Or crispy pork or corned beef hash
Or sausages or mutton mash.
Then could it be a big plump hen?
He answers no. What is it, then?
Oh, lion dear, could I not make
You happy with a lovely steak?
Could I entice you from your lair
With rabbit-pie or roasted hare?
The lion smiled and shook his head.
He came up very close and said,
'The meat I am about to chew
Is neither steak nor chops. IT'S YOU!'"
Aside from nursery rhymes, it's the first poem I ever memorized—to recite in front of the class in fourth grade.
Now that I'm reading Going Solo, Dahl's autobiography (part two), I see where so much of this comes from! For example, his first published piece (for a newspaper) was about a woman who was carried away by a lion, and everyone was panicking and trying to shoot the lion, or at least catch up with it. But when the lion startled and ran off, dropping the woman, there wasn't a scratch on her, and she was laughing. Supposedly he saw it happen. There's a recurring theme of dangerous animals, and flying—both of which feature prominently in Going Solo.
I remember wondering how he made the poems so good. They felt right! Right? What was the trick? Maybe they're super silly, but read aloud, they've got a nice ring. As an adult, I have a clue or two what's going on, but I still enjoy the poems. Part of the secret is just... well, nursery rhymes. All the poems follow the same meter—"common meter" or "iambic tetrameter." That's four stresses per line, 8 syllables in all, and iambs. So the rhythm is like "enough enough enough enough," and it chugs away. There are very few deviations, and they're minor and momentary, maybe an extra syllable or a flipped stress. This much consistency could make them dull, but it doesn't.
It sounds classic. The verses are well-written for the purpose and work just like most songs and nursery rhymes, following the "Eenie, meenie, miny, moe" pattern, only, well, the stresses are all backwards from that. So... it's kind of like a nursery rhyme, but backwards. Apropos, no? Oh, and like your average song, as you noticed, the poems pair lines up in rhyming couplets.
Just now, I was looking for a nursery rhyme to give as an example of common meter / iambic tetrameter, and there just don't seem to be many. But here's one I've never heard before: "A man whose name was Johnny Sands..." That's so much less interesting as a beginning than "No animal is half so vile..."! Usually nursery rhymes are more like "Eenie, meenie, miny, moe" or "Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater..." Not "The lion just adores to eat..."
