Poem of the Day: ‘I Saw a Peacock’

Back at the beginning of our writing, early English and Anglo-Saxon poetry reveled in riddles. The 10th-century “Exeter Book,” for example, has more than 90 of them. Some of those Exeter poems are about Christian religion, some about birds, some about everyday objects, and some are translated from the seventh-century Latin riddles of St. Aldhelm. A number of the Exeter riddles have the comic double-entendre effect of inviting the listener to guess a bawdy or obscene answer, only to claim innocence. Riddle 25, for example: Ic eom wunderlicu wiht, wifum on hyhte, “I am a wondrous creature, a joy to women,” which turns out to be about an onion.Centuries later, in the Victorian era, we got an explosion of light verse — comic, nonsense, children’s, and riddle poetry. From Edward Lear to Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert to May Kendall, the Sun has offered any number of these poems for its Lighter Wednesday selections of verse.The literary question, however, is how to link the 10th century to the 19th, the Anglo-Saxons to the Victorians. The bawdy comedy of the 14th-century Chaucer comes in there somewhere, of course. And Mother Goose as well, with its 18th-century collection of stray bits of English verse. But another link in the tentative chain is the trick poem “I Saw a Peacock,” which appears in a 1665 commonplace book.The nonsense part is the grammatical connection of each noun with the incompatible clause that follows it: “I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground.” And the riddle part is the logical connection of that clause to the next noun: “swallow up a Whale, / I saw a raging Sea.” And in that fun trick, we can discern, perhaps, a line between the old English love of riddling verse with the Victorian perfection of light poetry.I Saw a Peacockby AnonymousI Saw a Peacock, with a fiery tail, I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail, I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round, I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground, I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale, I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale, I saw a Venice Glass, Sixteen foot deep, I saw a well, full of mens tears that weep, I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire, I saw a House, as big as the Moon and higher, I saw the Sun, even in the midst of night, I saw the man, that saw this wondrous sight.___________________________________________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 are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always 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: ‘I Saw a Peacock’

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