Classics for Beginners discussion

This thread is to discuss your favorite poetry classic works and what you are reading in the classic realm of poetry.

It isn't really classic but I adore Carol Ann Duffy! (I think she is the current poet laureate)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ryhme of the Ancient Mariner!"

Annabel Liegh by E. A. Poe!

I second Annabel Lee.

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" wrote: "I second Annabel Lee."

A strangely sad and beautiufl poem from the master of the macabre and horrible frightening things.

My favorite poets include Ted Hughes (husband of Sylvia Plath), Dorothy Parker and Shel Silverstein. I remember reading Dorothy Parker as a teenager and just fell in love with her wit and humor. Her angsty love poems were just my cup of tea at the time. :P I remember crying over her "I know I have been happiest". Ted Hughes initially caught my attention with his most famous poem, "The Thought-Fox" and Shel Silverstein was the poet of my childhood :)

Here's the poem:
THE THOUGHT-FOX

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

and there is always my favorite

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.



Clint Eastwood's movie tried, but failed to show how important that poem was and how big of a deal the South African RFC had been in the country. It's a huge shift away from hate.

Anyway, it's also a powerfully inspirational poem.

My favorite is Rainer Maria Rilke... "Just keep going, no feeling is final." It's my mantra!

Also love Rumi ("Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure") and Wendell Berry, W.S. Merwin.

Not sure if those are 'classic' poets, but I am a fan!

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" wrote: "I second Annabel Lee."

Here, Here! 'A Dream Within a Dream' is also a favorite of mine by Poe, and of course 'The Raven'

Robert Burns and 'Tam o'Shanter'; favorite poem that tells a story.

Only Poe and Burns I seem to ever return to when I read poetry, although I have read these two extensively. A bit limited I know, but if you had to choose just two poets...

Hugh (The other Hugh) wrote: "Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" wrote: "I second Annabel Lee."

A strangely sad and beautiufl poem from the master of the macabre and horrible frightening things."

I totally agree!

<3 Annable Lee

My all time favorite poem is Robert Frost Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

That's lovely, Teri-lynn.

I would love to take the credit for this...but unfortunately that goes to Robert Frost...The first time I heard it was at a funeral...and it's also in my favorite book The Outsiders

I know Sylvia Plath is considered more of a modern classic author and poet but I wanted to share this poem with you guys. It's one of my favorite poems of all time!

A Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Some of William Blake's work is very fascinating. Short, simple and yet with hidden political depth.

Personally I'm a big fan of Poe's poetry. It's brilliant, deep and imaginative. He was a true poet and that is reflected in his writing.

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken is great as are some of Wordsworth's poems.

I tend to prefer shorter poems with that wonderful lyricism and hidden depth. Something that haunts the mind afterward like "And is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" is also loved.

To wrap this up I must say that one of my other all-time favorite poems is by Dorothea McKellar called My Country and its second verse is well known in Australia:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

I cannot remember the author but I was amazed at one poem by a man who gave his lover an onion to show his love for her, then I think he went on to say how it rots.

And just because it is Burns Night, my 2nd favorite Burns poem.


'Lines Written In Friars Carse Hermitage', Robert Burns, c. 1788.


Thou whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,
Be thou deckt in silken stole,
Grave these maxims on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost:
Hope not sunshine every hour,
Fear not clouds will always lour.

Happiness is but a name,
Make content and ease thy aim,
Ambition is a meteor-gleam;
Fame, an idle restless dream;

Peace, the tend'rest flow'r of spring;
Pleasures, insects on the wing;
Those that sip the dew alone-
Make the butterflies thy own;
Those that would the bloom devour-
Crush the locusts, save the flower.

For the future be prepar'd,
Guard wherever thou can'st guard;
But thy utmost duly done,
Welcome what thou can'st not shun.
Follies past, give thou to air,
Make their consequence thy care:
Keep the name of Man in mind,
And dishonour not thy kind.
Reverence with lowly heart
Him, whose wondrous work thou art;
Keep His Goodness still in view,
Thy trust, and thy example, too.

Stranger, go! Heaven be thy guide!
Quod the Beadsman of Nithside.

My favorite Ogden Nash Poem. Better than "Fleas" (Adam Had 'em)

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man

by Ogden Nash

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about the sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn't be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you haven't added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven't kept and the bills you
haven't paid and the letters you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more trouble than the
unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

Another of my favorite poems....

THE TALE OF CUSTARD THE DRAGON

By Ogden Nash

Copyright Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,

They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.
Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,

When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.
Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,

For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.
Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;

It was clear that the pirate meant no good.
Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,

And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.
But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm

He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.
The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,

And Custard gobbled him, every bit.
Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate

Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.
Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,

And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

1936

Ogden Nash is amazing. I'm sure it was him who said "if you know you're wrong, admit it, If you know you're right ... shut up" or words to that effect.

Does anyone know a poem I believe was called conversion about a soldier getting ready to die and has a conversation with God? I can't find it. I read it in the 70s and I believe it was written in one of the WWs.

Curmungi! I LOVED invictus! you know, I had never heard of that poem until i saw the movie? and I immediately went out and found the poem. Definitely one of my top 10 fav poems of all time.

Jill, Rilke is amazing. I'll never forget first reading "Letters to a Young Poet." I realized right away I had heard about it before and I realized it was the book Whoopi Goldberg recommended to Lauren Hill in Sister Act II! Too funny. Rilke is an amazing writer.

My number one fav poem is: We wear the mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar - want to share it...

WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

And my second favorite poem of all time

Thoughts
by Sarah Teasdale


When I am all alone
Envy me most,
Then my thoughts flutter round me
In a glimmering host;

Some dressed in silver,
Some dressed in white,
Each like a taper
Blossoming light;

Most of them merry,
Some of them grave,
Each of them lithe
As willows that wave;

Some bearing violets,
Some bearing bay,
One with a burning rose
Hidden away --

When I am all alone
Envy me then,
For I have better friends
Than women and men.

Never mind I found it this time... It's A Soldier's Conversion By Frances Angermayer. Anyway I like it.

Elaine wrote: "Ogden Nash is amazing. I'm sure it was him who said "if you know you're wrong, admit it, If you know you're right ... shut up" or words to that effect."

That sounds like him. He also said "candy is dandy but liquor is quicker."

Janine wrote: "And my second favorite poem of all time..."

That one is very nice, Janine. I like it.

and another person who makes a statement through punctuation. e. e. cummings. (one of my favorites also)

“next to of course god america i"
e. e. cummings

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

e. e. cummings

FYI this was written in the 1920s I believe. It's not modern.

I like this e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me                                      
by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
                                    i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

I like this one too...
Solitude
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
LAUGH, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of it's own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

I'd love to hear some of those poems read I can't quite get an idea how they would sound. I can really do that with rhyming poetry very well but some of the e.e.cummings are more tricky.

I can appreciate the lack of punctuation... :)

i thought you might...plus e. e. cummings wrote some wonderful love and romantic poems too

what, just cuz i'm a girl i'm gonna like mushy romantic stuff???

nooo... (slaps forhead) the lack of punctuation! e.e. cummings doesn't use caps. He's a rebel too.

so when you take in the lack of punctuation a rebel without a pause then

@Curmudgeon - you so fell for that. *evil grin* It's retaliation for that days of the month comment on your other post. *wink*

@Jimmy - so bad! i love it!

jimmy jimmy jimmy that was very creative heh lol

janine you got me cept i thought i posted that after i posted here

More like a rebel without a clause...
But anyway nice Jimmy.

This is a favourite of mine which I memorised off by heart for school a while back. I still remember it mostly.

Clancy of the Overflow by A.B.Patterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

In light of the March read, I revisited a poem by Sylvia Plath written 1 October 1962:

The Detective

What was she doing when it blew in
Over the seven hills, the red furrow, the blue mountain?
Was she arranging cups? Is it important.
Was she at the window, listening?
In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.

That is the valley of death, though the cows thrive.
In her garden the lies were shaking out their moist silks
And the eyes of the killer moving sluglike and sidelong,
Unable to face the fingers, those egotists.
The fingers were tamping a woman into a wall,

A body into a pipe, and the smoke rising.
This is the smell of years burning, here in the kitchen,
These are the deceits, tacked up like family photographs,
And this is a man, look at his smile,
The death weapon? No one is dead.

There is no body in the house at all.
There is a smell of polish, there are plush carpets.
There is sunlight, playing its blades,
Bored hoodlum in a red room
where the wireless talks itself like an elderly relative,

Did it come like an arrow, did it come like a knife?
Which of the poisons is it?
Which of the nerve-curlers, the convulsors? Did it electrify?
This is a case without a body.
The body does not come into it at all.

It is a case of vaporization.
The mouth first, its absence reported
In the second year. It had been insatiable
And in punishment was hung out like a brown fruit
To wrinkle and dry.

The breasts were next.
These were harder, two white stones.
The milk came yellow, then blue and sweet as water.
There was no absence of lips, there were two children,
But their bones showed, and the moon smiled.

Then the dry wood, the gates,
The brown motherly furrows, the whole estate.
We walk on air, Watson.
There is only the moon, embalmed in phosphorus.
There is only a crow in a tree. Make notes.

* This was written only two days before she wrote the "bee poems" and I noticed that someone commented in the thread about Sherlock Holmes that another series was out called "The Beekeepers Apprentice"...what a strange coincidence ;)

One of my favorite poets is Attila Jozsef, and one of my favorite poems of his is "To Sit, to Stand, to Kill, to Die"

To shove this chair away from here,
to sit down in front of a train,
to climb a mountain with great care,
to shake my bag into the valley,
to feed a bee to my old spider,
to caress an old, old woman,
to sip a delicious bean soup,
to walk on tiptoes in the mud,
to place my hat on railroad tracks,
to stroll around the banks of a lake,
to sit all dressed up on the bottom,
to get a suntan while the waves ring,
to flower with the sunflowers,
or just to give off a deep sigh,
to scare away a single fly,
to wipe the dust from my old book,
to spit a gob into my mirror,
to make peace with my enemies,
to kill them all with a long knife,
to examine their blood gushing,
to watch a young girl as she walks,
to sit idle without stirring,
to set fire to Budapest,
to wait for birds to take my crumbs,
to hurl my stale bread to the ground,
to make my faithful woman cry,
to lift her little sister up high,
if the world wants explanations,
to run away and never be seen--
O you bind me and you free me,
you who write this poem in me,
you bring laughter, you bring weeping,
O my life, you make me choose.

Baltic Fog Notes

Seven days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky,
And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here.
Among the Wednesday night thousands in goloshes and coats slickered for rain,
I learned how hungry I was for streets and people.

I would rather be water than anything else.
I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of morning.
And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway … and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and over the edges of mountain shelves.
Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway.
Three tongues of water sing around it with snow from the mountains.

Bury me in the North Atlantic.
A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always.

Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
The blizzards loosen their pipe organ voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea.

Carl Sandburg

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Carl Sandburg

I'd never read Baltic Fog Notes before. It's extraordinary. Thanks for posting it.

Your welcome. I tend to like Sanburg and e.e.cummings, and of course Robert Frost. I hadn't read that poem either until I stumbled across it looking for "Fog."

THE TALE OF CUSTARD THE DRAGON

By Ogden Nash

(Copyright Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt)

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

1936

Nash is great. I love the line "And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed."

and Custard kept crying for his nice safe cage....yea, after he ate the pyrate up every bit!