The pleasant Isle of Avès

Well, I find a small amount of reassurance in the fact that Samina Malik is not going to jail. Writing bad poetry about sawing people’s heads off and calling oneself the ‘Lyrical Terrorist’ might reasonably be regarded as offences against taste; the idea that they are enough to get you investigated by the cops – let alone convicted of a ‘terrorist offence’ – utterly appals me.

Poetry is in the news this week. The school inspectors are concerned that English children in primary schools are ‘studying too many lightweight poems’. The article reminded me of a tattered treasure of mine which usually rests quietly on a high shelf: A Book of Verse for Boys and Girls. Compiled by J. C. Smith. Part III. I have owned it for more than forty-five years, and it was already about forty years old when I acquired it. I was in the first or second year of junior school (aged about eight) when the Headmaster decided it was time to clear the stockroom of textbooks that were no longer used. So they laid out all the redundant books on long trestle tables and we children, a form at a time, filed past and chose one book each to keep. (These days they would probably go for paper salvage, if not landfill; but that was a thriftier time.) As soon as I saw this single dirty, disintegrating paperback with the words ‘TEACHER'S COPY’ scribbled on the cover, my heart leaped up, and I grabbed it. Not that there was any competition for it, as I recall. It really is a scruffy, unprepossessing object. But it was the magic word ‘verse’ in the title – poetry! More poems! Over the next few years, I thumbed it and cherished it into further decrepitude.

It was in this book I first found The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which terrified and fascinated me, and entered deeply into my soul; also Kubla Khan, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur and Blow, bugle, blow; a good selection of border ballads, including Thomas the Rhymer and The Wife of Usher’s Well; a judicious choice of Wordsworth; quite a lot of Scott (but I liked it); Lord Macaulay – out of fashion now, but stirring stuff for a child: I liked the stirring stuff. A few of the poems are weak and long forgotten, but most are true classics. Some went way over my head; I don’t recall getting much out of Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso at that age. But I liked On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.

No one will love this book after me. My heirs will put it in the bin. The only reason to give it house room is the memories it holds.

The Last Buccaneer

Oh England is a pleasant place for them that’s rich and high;
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;
And such a port for mariners I ne’er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Avès, beside the Spanish main.

There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about;
And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,
Which he wrung by cruel tortures from Indian folk of old;
Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,
Who flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone.

( More )

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875)


<link>