Fred Ann wrote:
So in my last few posts: a ship model, a flag shows me to be stretching the topic slightly, but before returning to pictures, bear with me as this seems like a good opportunity to include a much loved poem. Back in the days of elementary school, a favoured assignment of teachers was to assign the memorization of lines of poetry. This poem lent itself easily to memorization. Just study the first 4 lines for a few minutes and its beautiful musical rhyme will stick in your mind for the day. They have in mine over the many many, years and I still love the shipping and trading history lesson included in this poem. ( I probably only had to memorize the first ten lines or so.)
The Ships of Yule
by New Brunswick poet, Bliss Carman
When I was just a little boy,
Before I went to school,
I had a fleet of forty sail
I called the Ships of Yule;
Of every rig, from rakish brig
And gallant barkentine,
To little Fundy fishing boats
With gunwales painted green.
They used to go on trading trips
Around the world for me,
For though I had to stay on shore
My heart was on the sea.
They stopped at every port to call
From Babylon to Rome,
To load with all the lovely things
We never had at home;
With elephants and ivory
Bought from the King of Tyre,
And shells and silks and sandal-wood
That sailor men admire;
With figs and dates from Samarcand,
And squatty ginger-jars,
And scented silver amulets
From Indian bazaars;
With sugar-cane from Port of Spain,
And monkeys from Ceylon,
And paper lanterns from Pekin
With painted dragons on;
With cocoanuts from Zanzibar,
And pines from Singapore;
And when they had unloaded these
They could go back for more.
And even after I was big
And had to go to school,
My mind was often far away
Aboard the Ships of Yule.
Bliss William Carman
So in my last few posts: a ship model, a flag show... (
show quote)
Original poem was:
The Ships of Yule
by New Brunswick poet, Bliss Carman
I was reading it but my brain kept changing some lines
When I was just a little boy,
Before I went to school,
I had a fleet of forty sail
I called the Ships of Yule;
Of every rig, from rakish brig
And gallant
barkenteen,
To little Fundy fishing boats
With gunwales painted green.
(https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199205684.001.0001/acref-9780199205684-e-180
I had to change spelling as i kept reading it as "tayn" instead of "tin" LOL.)They used to go on trading trips
Around the world for me,
For though I had to stay on shore
My heart was on the sea.
They stopped at every port to call
From Babylon to Rome,
To load with all the lovely things
We never had at home;
With elephants and ivory
Bought from
Ceylon's Shire.
And shells and silks and sandal-wood
That sailor men admire;
(the King of Tyre; ancient Phoenician city in what is now Lebanon, has war elephants.
Celyon, present day Sri Lanka, is endemic to one of three recognised subspecies of the Asian elephant)With figs and dates from Samarcand,
And squatty ginger-jars,
And scented silver amulets
From
old Indian bazaars;
With sugar-cane from Port of Spain,
And monkeys from
Peru,
And paper lanterns
of PekingWith painted dragons
two;
(Ceylon was already used LOL. In the sentence, Peru rolls nicely in the tongue and they have 11 species of monkeys. Ceylon/Sri Lanka has 3 species)With cocoanuts from Zanzibar,
And pines from Singapore;
And when they had unloaded these
They
would go back for more.
'cause even after I was big
And had to go to school,
My mind was often far away
Aboard the Ships of Yule.
What a nice, dreamy and adventurous poem.