Those old school poems

[grinder]

In the 10yrs of education I received many years ago now. I attended four different schools.

Each school had at least one teacher who was determined to give us a bit of "culture",though they must have know they were flogging a dead horse, they insisted we leaned a piece of poetry.

 

Now poetry was not something you usually discussed with the rest of the Football team or your mates, for obvious reasons. But....

Amazingly some of it stuck, though perhaps only the odd sentence or two for the most part, but some times in rare moments of lucidity a button is pushed and bloody gret swathes of it come rushing back, stuff you'd forgotten you even knew !!!!

 

The farthest I can go back (forgetting nursery rhymes )is this from the Infants at Arbourthorne North...

 

I wonder, I wonder, if anyone knows,

who lives in the hart of a velvety rose.

Is it a Goblin or is it an Elf,

or is it the Queen of the fairies her self ....

[DUFFEMS]

Carfield Junior School, Mrs. Jones' English lessons:

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these,

A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees,

A vagrant's morning wide and blue,

In early fall when the wind walks too

 

This is clearly American/Canadian and us Meersbrook kids had no idea what a hard-wood tree or a vagrant was but, we all sat there and chanted the whole 20+ verses!

Mrs. Jones would march up and down at the front of the class striding in time with our melancholic voices whilst beating the time with a ruler, I still have the image in my mind.

 

Another one which we sang with Miss. Cowley the music teacher:

The camel's hump is an ugly lump which well you may see at the zoo

But uglier yet is the hump we get from having too little to do

 

This is before the word "hump" had a different meaning!

[grinder]

One that comes and go's in bits from Heeley Bank school started,

 

Old meg she was a Gypsy who lived upon the moors.....

 

one verse I think went -

 

Her apples were squat blackberry's,

her pears were pods of broom

Her wine was the dew of the wild white rose,

her book a church yard tomb...

I think I remember that bit because it was the teachers favorite verse and even at that early age I was a creep .....

[shedevil]

oLD MOTHER REILEY TRIED TO MILK A COW

oLD MOTHER REILEY DIDNT KNOW HOW

SHE PULLED ITS TAIL

INSTEAD IF ITS TIT

AND OLD MOTHER REILEY GOT COVERED IN S**T

[DUFFEMS]

One that comes and go's in bits from Heeley Bank school started,

 

Old meg she was a Gypsy who lived upon the moors.....

 

one verse I think went -

 

Her apples were squat blackberry's,

her pears were pods of broom

Her wine was the dew of the wild white rose,

her book a church yard tomb...

I think I remember that bit because it was the teachers favorite verse and even at that early age I was a creep .....

 

Think it's a Keats poem:

OLD MEG she was a Gipsy,

And liv'd upon the Moors:

Her bed it was the brown heath turf,

And her house was out of doors.

 

 

II.

 

Her apples were swart blackberries,

Her currants pods o'broom;

Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,

Her book a churchyard tomb.

 

Strangely enough, to this day I hate poetry, I don't see the point in it though I love the English language.

Duffems

[shedevil]

My aunty mary had a canary

up the leg of her drawers

when she f**ted

down it darted

from the leg of her drawers

[grinder]

That's the one Duffems,

Keats eh,

Fancy,

I nearly got it right so some of it must have stuck...

 

shedevil.

Your teacher taught you those !!!

What school did you go to ?

 

PS.

Is that She devil or Shed evil

[cal1943]

oLD MOTHER REILEY TRIED TO MILK A COW

oLD MOTHER REILEY DIDNT KNOW HOW

SHE PULLED ITS TAIL

INSTEAD IF ITS TIT

AND OLD MOTHER REILEY GOT COVERED IN S**T

 

Hi,

You must have gone to the same school as my husband! He knew the same poetry as you! lol

[shedevil]

Hi,

You must have gone to the same school as my husband! He knew the same poetry as you! lol

 

lolololthey were school yard poems as the worm song was lol

[shedevil]

now you bite of there heads

and you suck out the juice

andyou throw there skins away

nobody knows how the teacher survives

on a hundred worms a day