A Pox on Poetry

From The Ultimate Christmas Cracker (2019), compiled by John Julius Norwich:

How beautiful, I have often thought, would be the names of many of our vilest diseases, were it not for their disagreeable associations. My old friend Jenny Fraser sent me this admirable illustration of the fact by J.C. Squire:

So forth then rode Sir Erysipelas
From good Lord Goitre’s castle, with the steed
Loose on the rein: and as he rode he mused
On Knights and Ladies dead: Sir Scrofula,
Sciatica, he of Glanders, and his friend,
Stout Sir Colitis out of Aquitaine,
And Impetigo, proudest of them all,
Who lived and died for blind Queen Cholera’s sake:
Anthrax, who dwelt in the enchanted wood
With those princesses three, tall, pale and dumb,
And beautiful, whose names were Music’s self,
Anaemia, Influenza, Eczema.
And then once more the incredible dream came back,
How long ago upon the fabulous Shores
Of far Lumbago, all of a summer’s Day,
He and the maid Neuralgia, they twain,
Lay in a flower-crowned mead, and garlands wove,
Of gout and yellow hydrocephaly,
Dim palsies, and pyrrhoea, and the sweet
Myopia, bluer than the summer Sky:
Agues, both white and red, pied common cold,
Cirrhosis and that wan, faint flower
The shep­herds call dyspepsia. — Gone, all gone:
There came a Knight: he cried ‘Neuralgia!’
And never a voice to answer. Only rang
O’er cliff and battlement and desolate mere
‘Neuralgia!’ in the echoes’ mockery.


Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

J.C. Squire at Wikipedia

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

nosopoetic (obsolete rare) Producing or causing disease. ← noso- comb. form + ‑poetic comb. form, after Hellenistic Greek νοσοποιός causing illness; compare ancient Greek νοσοποιεῖν to cause illness. — Oxford English Dictionary

Rhyme and Again

From John Julius Norwich’s More Christmas Crackers (1990):

Holorhymes are whole lines which have the same sound but different meanings. For some reason, they seem to go better in French. Louise de Vilmorin gave me two beautiful ones:

Étonnamment monotone et lasse
Est ton âme en mon automne, hélas!

And

Gall, amant de la reine, alla tour magnanime,
Gallament de l’arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.

This second one is by Victor Hugo.

Troicronyme

• R I O A E T L U

→ Herriot a été élu.


• L N N E O P Y I A V Q E I E D C D

→ Hélène est née au pay grec, y a vécu et y est décédée.


• J J A D I D A C K O T L A H E T D B K C D G A L E V D I N C P I E D F I J E C O Q P D B B A J T

→ Gigi a des idées assez cahotées: elle a acheté des bécasses et des geais, a élevé des hyènes, s’est payé des effigies et s’est occupée des bébés agités.

• From John Julius Norwich’s More Christmas Crackers (1990)