Sheep, by Edward Edwin Foot

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This month, the h2g2 Post Editor fulfills a personal promise [threat] to Guide Editor Bluebottle. Namely, to devote the month of February to a Literary Corner tribute to the literature connected to the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight's literary connections are a fruitful source of inquiry, and we are grateful to Bluebottle for his Guide Entry and inspiration here.

This week's Literary Corner is devoted to a poem by Edward Edwin Foot. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. It's about sheep, and you know how h2g2 feels about sheep. Contrary to popular opinion, Foot did not invent the footnote. He just used them a lot, to make his poetry even more 'special'. In the ensuing, I have distinguished between the Editor's footnotes and Foot's footnotes.

Sheep, by Edward Edwin Foot

Sheep.

Ed. Note: Read this poem. If you do not thereupon have the urge to become a vegetarian –, or, at least, to give up mutton – you have a heart of stone.

How welcome 'tis to human eye
To see the mead-lands gay with sheep1:
How homely is the lambkin's cry;
How sweet to see them run and leap.
Look, whilst unheeded falls the show'r,
How nimbly each one nips the blade2;
And, as the rain-drops trickle o'er
Them3, how intent they mind their trade.
Their life-time's short, but sweet content
Ne'er fails them: on and on they pass,
And as they wander innocent-
Ly yield4, and aid the growing grass.5
When Dame Aurora steeps the main
With her resistless flood of light6,
They're up, and at their trade again,
And nibble, nibbling till 'tis night.
But when a storm is gathering fast,
See how they'll seek some shelter'd cove;
How cunningly they'll shun the blast,
Beneath a hazel-hedge, or grove7.
When down at night they gently lie,
Unconscious where the light hath flown,
It may be plann'd for all to die
Before the morrow's afternoon8.
'Tis so ! – a sound doth 'lectrify
The timid throng: they congregate;
And, as th' intruder they espy,
Seem apprehensive of their fate.
Away unto some nook they run,
Or to the angle of the field;
The shepherd marks them one by one,
And one by one they have to yield.
(Perchance it is the month of May):
Their shornèd quarters fat and fleet
Are needed in some other way, –
Are soon, alas! transform'd to meat.9
O! little faithfuls, – eat and drink,
For on to-morrow you must fall:
'Tis good thou hast no thought to think;
Were't so thy life-time would be gall.
Suppose it's March: the fields10 are bare;
The hunter's horn rides on the gale;
And suddenly a fox, or hare,
Comes bounding over hedge or pale.
Then see them how they'll gather round,
As though some dreadful foe was near;
And mark, when forth the foremost hound
Comes yelping onward, how they fear;
And stand aghast-like – stark and still –
Until the yelpers have flown past,
Until the hunters cross the hill,
And then again seek their repast.
(Now when the distant sportsmen see
The nervous flock haste to the fence,
'Tis known to them with accuracy
The prey hath cross'd, or crossing thence11)
Ah ! little think they (but 'tis true12)
That, as they heed the fleeting throng,
Those hunters' coats, red, green, or blue,
Have from such backs as theirs been flung13 .
Turn, reader, from the blithesome chase
To where the staggering thrust is dealt;
Behold the death-stains on the face,
And see what gory blood is spilt:
Conceive, what thousands in a day
Reel at the shock which lays them low;
That as they hang, as cold as clay.
Ten thousand more receive the blow14!
All pity's fled, when (at the fire,)
Leg, loin, or shoulder 's on the spit.
To grace the table of the squire –
Surrounded by things amply fit.
Where they were bom, or how they live,
On what they feed, or how they die.
Or how the little creatures grieve
When on the butcher's block they lie
Ne'er strikes th' attention of the guest,
Host, hostess, scull'ry-maid, nor cook;
It's – whether it be rightly drest,
And whether "paid," or on the book.
O! little faithfuls, – eat and drink,
For on to-morrow you must fall:
'Tis good thou hast no thought to think;
Were 't so, thy lifetime would be gall.
Trip on, lie down and go to sleep.
Run skipfully15, or stand ye still;
Feed on, as should ye – pretty sheep,
Until thou deem'st thou 'st had thy fill; –16
No-one will grudge thee what thou 'st ta'en,
For in return thou 'videst17 us food:
Ah! through the field and narrow lane
Thou 'rt hurried to the field of blood.
Thy jackets, shorn, are piled in store.
Or carted to the mart for sale;
Thy wool, O! meek ones (woven o'er),
Adorns the hearth18, flaunts in the gale.
In every land, on every sea,
Where commerce traverses the globe, –
'Tis knit in garb's simplicity;
Knit in the monarch's choicest robe;
Knit in the infant's swaddling clothes;
Knit in the mother's "jaconet;" –19
In colours various as the rose,
As various as the violet,
Promiscuous 'sturchion20, and (methinks)
Still further – the chrysanthemum,21
Punctilious dahlia, horned pinks.
The rose-like poppy in full bloom.
Nay, more – geraniums, beauteous things.
The ear-drop fuchsias – every kind.
And that sweet flow'r22 which gently clings
To where contentment fills the mind23 . –
Not that contentment reigns alone24
In the most humble cottages,
But that it is more rarely known
To dwell in gorgeous palaces.

Ed. Note: Believe it or not, that is the end of this poem. He must have run out of time. Edward Edwin Foot published these poems in 1867. We may safely assume that he has now gone to join his fellow Vogons in that great Poetry Seminar in the sky. Good riddance.

The Literary Corner Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.02.17 Front Page

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1Ed.: Don't ask, don't bleat.2Ed.: Of grass, silly.3Ed.: Note the judicious enjambement. It gets better soon.4Ed.: TOLD you! That '-Ly' is a masterstroke.5Ed.: Is this a coy Victorian reference to manure?6Ed.: Aurora is the goddess of the dawn. Where did you go to school, Trump University?7Ed.: In other words, sheep have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Unlike bald Yorkshiremen who won't wear hats.8Ed.: Cue sinister music.9Ed.: This stark realism is simply breathtaking.10Foot Footnote: Cornfields.11Ed.: Sheep radar, who'd have thought?12Ed.: Yeah, they're like Faux News readers that way.13Ed.: I recognise that jumper. That's Aunt Nelly.14Ed.: Meat is murder. Repeat after me.15Ed.: Go outside. Run skipfully. See if you get arrested.16Ed.: Only Ed Foot could end a stanza with a dash. Such panache!17Ed.: I think he means 'providest'. Foot's concern for correct scansion is touching.18Ed.: Flokati are also murder.19Foot Footnote: A kind of knitted jacket for the body. 20Ed.: I am going to take a wild stab and guess that Foot means 'nasturtium'. But I don't think its morals are worse than any other flower's.21Ed.: GAH! He's found a seed catalogue! Take it away before this poem goes on for 92 more stanzas!22Foot Footnote: The woodbine. [I guess he couldn't get it in otherwise.]23Foot Footnote: The peasant's cot. [It's where contentment fills the mind. That's what you think when you live in the city. If you were in the peasant's cot, you'd think: Why am stuck out in the boondocks, where there are no decent Greek restaurants?]24Ed.: Sweet relief. Foot's mind, such as it is, has wandered off to another topic, and left the seed catalogue alone.

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