May I say firstly that this column is not about someone who pens a poem occasionally, every once in a while. The definition of Occasional Verse is poetry written to describe or comment on a particular occasion or event. It could be real or imaginary, public or private, somber or jovial, fleeting or memorable. But specific.
Here, as a seasonal starter, is a happy occasion from the past we can still relate to, especially this week.
Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather’s house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
for ’tis Thanksgiving Day.
That verse above was from “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day,” and there is no shortage of other poems and church anthems to mark the occasion. One that cuts to the chase . . . meaning Thanksgiving dinner . . . is by another New Englander, John Greenleaf Whittier, who wrote this:
Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest;
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin Pie?
* * *
As an occasion overview, major poems saluting major occasions would include, for example, Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
A major poem about a minor occasion would be Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
* * *
Political verse can be particularly specific to an occasion. Consider Amanda Gorman’s impressive 2021 Presidential Inauguration poem, the one that ends:
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast, where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover,
In every known nook of our nation,
In every corner called our country,
Our people diverse and dutiful,
Will emerge battered but beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade,
Aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
* * *
* * *
A wedding is surely an occasion that can call forth poetry in abundance; but I like and have experienced the every-weekday-afternoon occasion that comes later in the marriage. Phyllis McGinley calls this sonnet “The 5:32.”
She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,
Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember
(As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber)
This hour best of all the hours I knew:
When cars came backing into the shabby station,
Children scuffing the seats, and the women driving
With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving,
And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion.
Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said:
Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper,
And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper
Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head;
And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town,
And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down.
* * *
Some personal occasions are unexpected but live on in the memory, especially if there is a romantic overtone. This is by Leigh Hunt.
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
And here is a beautiful piece by Sara Teasdale remembering romantic occasions in a park along the Hudson River. Her title is “Summer Night, Riverside”
In the wild soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
While your kisses and the flowers,
Falling, falling,
Tangled in my hair….
The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.
And now, far off
In the fragrant darkness
The tree is tremulous again with bloom
For June comes back.
To-night what girl
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair
This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils
* * *
* * *
Some of the finest moments for occasional verse are when it meets the humor of light verse with quite wonderful results. I have three poets in my Light Verse Hall of Fame: W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, Ogden Nash, and Billy Collins. Here are favorite pieces from two of them.
First, Ogden Nash was asked to supervise a children’s party and describes the event in this report.
May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party’s over.
Since three o’clock I’ve done my best
To entertain each tiny guest.
My conscience now I’ve left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other’s throats.
I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces.
Of similarities there’s lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I’ve earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages.
Oh, progeny playing by itself Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez.
Shunned are the games a parent proposes,
They prefer to squirt each other with hoses,
Their playmates are their natural foemen
And they like to poke each other’s abdomen.
Their joy needs another woe’s to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,
And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone’s presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,
But not till after the party’s over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover
* * *
Billy Collins always makes me smile. In this poem called “Life Expectancy,” he offers commentary on two occasions: his birthday and his funeral.
On the morning of a birthday that ended in a zero,
I was looking out at the garden
when it occurred to me that the robin
on her worm-hunt in the dewy grass
had a good chance of outliving me,
as did the worm itself for that matter
if he managed to keep his worm-head down.
It was not always like this.
For decades, I could assume
that I would be around longer
than the squirrel dashing up a tree
or the nightly raccoons in the garbage,
longer than the barred owl on a branch,
the ibis, the chicken, and the horse,
longer than four deer in a clearing
and every creature in the zoo
except the elephant and the tortoise,
whose cages I would hurry past.
It was just then in my calculations
that the cat padded noiselessly into the room,
and it seemed reasonable, given her bright eyes and glossy coat,
to picture her at my funeral,
dressed all in black, as usual,
which would nicely set off her red collar,
some of the mourners might pause in their grieving to notice,
as she found a place next to a labradoodle
in a section of the church reserved for their kind.
* * *
* * *
There’s time for one more smile from Billy Collins, who was reminded of an occasion in Phoenix. He calls this “Feedback.”
The woman who wrote from Phoenix
after my reading there
to tell me they were all still talking about it
just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.
* * *
VIDEO. Henry Fonda and the First Poetry Quartet perform one of our best-loved occasion poems, about a happening involving “The Deacon’s Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.” The poet is Oliver Wendell Holmes.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: OCCASIONAL POETRY
