https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46702/pg46702-images.html
I was intrigued to find that Allingham's most famous poem "The Fairies" contained this verse:
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.
Another poem contained this line:
The Wizard! the Wizard!
He's up on the bough,
He'll bite through your gizzard
He's close to you now!
Maybe not Shakespeare, but appealing for children who generally have the odd propensity of enjoying being frightened, as well as imbuing the piece with the seriously dark side of the world of Faery.
The frequent inclusion of song-settings of the words shows how Allingham must have thought of this work - not as great, noble literature but as something that would appeal to children, rather like a superior kind of nursery-rhyme.
And surely a piece which begins like:
Golden, golden,
Light unfolding,
Busily, merrily, work and play,
In flowery meadows,
And forest shadows,
All the length of a Summer day!
All the length of a Summer day!
Isn't terribly far in intent, although perhaps it is in execution, from :
Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
but that carries the magic name of Shakespeare so escapes any accusation of "tweeness."
And as for the notion that we must judge words and music of the past by current standards as expressed in another part of the thread, I'm left to wonder just who sets current standards, what they are thought to be and whether or not they are any better than those which were in effect during previous eras.
Well, tastes change, and I don't think that the fact that some poetry was popular in its day (if indeed it really was, except to adults who viewed children through sentimental glasses) can be used to justify its merits in absolute terms. We must judge the quality of words - and music - by current standards, unless we are to regard them purely as 'period pieces' - in which case the law of supply and demands surely takes over, as in the case of antique ornaments. But that is a long way from judgements "of today". I cannot place myself in the position of a child of 1874; the brief passage which I quoted in my review surely demonstrates the sheer inanity of the verses themselves. What, for example, is a "nooklet" except a twee way of describing a nook that happens to conveniently rhyme?
In this context I might cite the views of J R R Tolkien, who was himself responsible for the perpetration of a poem entitled "Goblin Feet" in his early career, a poem very much in the Allingham tradition. At the end of his life however he wrote of it: "I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all thast I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever." I very much feel in sympathy with that view.
That does not mean of course that bad verse cannot inspire good, or even great music. And I did observe in my review that this happened in the third of Stanford's settings, where the musical inspiration takes over from the words and rises to heights than cannot possibly be justified as a simple response to the poetry.
Otherwise, to quote from the third section of Fairy Day: "When broadens the moonlight, we frolic and jest; when darkles [sic] the forest, we sink into rest."
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