Poem of the Day: ‘A Song for Mardi Gras’

It’s Mardi Gras today, or Shrove Tuesday, or whatever you want to call it: the day before Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent begins its forty days of abstinence. “Till Easter Monday all are chaste,” as Rolfe Humphries (1894–1969) puts it his 1957 poem “A Song for Mardi Gras.”Humphries was an American translator, poet, and classicist of some renown. His verse translation of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” for example, was widely praised at the time of its 1951 release, and it remains a solid and readable version. Disliking his former teacher, the Republican president of Columbia University, Humphries was delighted to receive an invitation to submit some verse to Poetry magazine, which he did: a 39-line poem with a hidden acrostic that spelled out “Nicholas Murray Butler is a horses ass.” In “A Song for Mardi Gras,” Humphries plays with a Welsh refrain, “Dy garu di a gerais,” that appears in “Cywydd Merch,” a late-medieval poem by Dafydd ab Edmwnd (c. 1450–97). In four six-line stanzas rhymed abcbdd, each beginning with the borrowed Welsh “I have loved loving you” and ending with the line “Till Easter Monday all are chaste,” Humphries imagines a lover setting aside his beloved. The poem is ambiguous. Perhaps he’s taking Lent as an unassailable excuse to end the tryst. Or perhaps his religious feeling is just strong enough to demand forty days without her charms, while not strong enough to demand an end to their affair. Regardless, a light and charming poem about love and the Christian calendar.A Song for Mardi Grasby Rolfe HumphriesI have loved loving you,O my dear, my softly spoken.Now the forty days draw near,Vows are made, vows are broken.Fare thee well, my little slim-waist —Till Easter Monday all are chaste.I have loved loving you,O my fond, O my darling,In the season and beyond,Under moon, under star.Now the time comes to fast — Till Easter Monday all are chaste.I have loved loving you,O my linnet, O my dove.God have mercy on a sinner!Fare thee well and absent, love,Moon and star must go to waste — Till Easter Monday all are chaste.I have loved loving you,O my green, O my shadow,In the ambush set betweenMountainside, moor, and meadow,March begone; April haste — Till Easter Monday all are chaste.___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘A Song for Mardi Gras’

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