I composed the following poem quite simply as an exercise in spelling and pronunciation for my students. The challenge was for the students to identify the rhyming scheme – in particular, in the first ten stanzas. They would then be asked to find the one stanza without a single true rhyme.

By the way, the final three stanzas do rhyme, but they rely, in the cases of “Cholmondeley”, “Featherstonehaugh” and “Cirencester”, on what I believe are now old-fashioned, if not archaic, forms of pronunciation.

I’ve added a recording, for anyone wanting to check the rhyme-scheme. I hope I’ve pronounced “Irish lough” correctly…

The Deceptive eye

One day the ailing Farmer Ron

Addressed his eldest sailor son:

“My boy, when I am dead and gone,

When my life’s work is fully done,

And I have flitted over there,

Then you’ll be left to cope down here.

It’s something you will have to bear

So wipe away that foolish tear.

Of course, you’ll pray for my poor soul,

That it will meet with nothing foul.

But you should rather raise a bowl

Of vinous thanks than moan or howl.

For after all you are the heir

To lands and fields and foaming weir.

Our crops of peach and plum and pear

Have ne’er failed yet, so have no fear.

Eliminate all thoughts of woes;

Once you have stepped into my shoes

You’ll think no more, I should suppose,

Of youthful pleasures you may lose.

As sailor-lad you’re quick, sharp-eyed,

You’ve worked, you’ve served, you’ve long obeyed;

Your captain’s orders you’ve ay-ayed,

It’s that or have your backside flayed.

But as we stand here on the quay,

Now let your father have his say.

In fact, I’d like to make a plea –

To which I trust you’ll answer yea.

My words I trust you’ll duly weigh;

To quote my old friend, Dr. Leigh:

‘Although my hair is going grey,

To happiness they are the key.’

So choose a wife who’ll spin and sew,

Who’ll cheerf’ly rise in foggy dew,

Make and baste and knead the dough,

And scrub and polish all day through.

A pretty face may please you now,

But looks can fool as these lines show.

Like apples hung on pear-tree bough,

They may entice – don’t eat them though.

Fair skin can hide deep festering meat.

To find what’s true’s no easy feat.

As jingling words may seem to meet

In jangling lines of dancing feet,

Which hide in fact quite other rhyme,

So ’ware the use of pungent thyme

To hide the smells provoked by time,

By summer’s fire or winter’s rime.”

“Now all right, Dad, I’ve let you plough

Your allegorical furrow through

My life – don’t think I like it though.

Without a single yawn or cough

I’ve let you work your scarcely thorough

Analogies out – but that’s enough.

Last year beside an Irish lough

I lost my heart to Mary Featherstonehaugh.

Of that I am, as any man, sure.

You’d rather I married Lucy Cholmondeley

But please don’t take it quite so glumly.

I’m off to see her now in Cirencester.

You’ll send paternal hugs and kisses t’her?

For there’s no need for you to panic,

We’re going to live way up in Alnwick.”

And then with no time left for dawdlin’,

We’re going to her college, Magdalen,

To finish off her work on Pepys,

Now proceeding in bounds and leaps.

I sent the poem to my friend, the poet and novelist Vikram Seth, and he replied with a brilliant seven-stanza poem titled “LSD in a Country Church-Yard”, riffing on, among other things, Kubla Khan and Beatles songs (it includes an “Abyssinian meter-maid”). I don’t think he will mind if I quote the final stanza to give an idea:

The Beatles scattered, rubber-souling.

The little dog went footpath-fouling.

The beetle rolled the moon while bowling,

And left the world to Seth and Dowling.