Apr 27, 2009

Another Poem to Entertain You While I'm Gone

by Joyce DiPastena

I’m not actually home and posting this today. I’m really still in Salt Lake City, recovering from the Storymakers Conference and enjoying an extra week with my sister before returning to sunny Arizona (where I’m sure the temperatures will have risen frightfully while I was gone).

I didn’t know if I’d have time to type a post while I’m in Utah, so I decided to type something early and schedule it to post today. And since I’m frantically trying to get ready to leave town for the Storymakers Conference, I don’t really have time to sit and type up a post from scratch, so I’m resorting to my usual fallback position by sharing another poem with you.

This poem seems appropriate, since I’m visiting my sister and this is a poem that my mother often read to my sister when we were young. I’ll leave it to you to see if you can figure out why she might have done so. If you know any little girls (or boys) like this, you might want to share this poem with them. (Unless, heaven forfend, this poem applies to you!)

Rebecca,
Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In Little Girls is slamming Doors.
A Wealthy Banker’s Little Daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this Furious Sport.
She would deliberately go
And Slam the door like Billy-Ho!
To make her Uncle Jacob start.
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild;
She was an aggravating child….

It happened that a Marble Bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above he Door this little Lamb
Had carefully prepared to Slam,
And Down it came! It knocked her flat
It laid her out! She looked like that.

*****

Her Funeral Sermon (which was long
And followed by a Sacred Song)
Mentioned her Virtues, it is true,
But dwelt upon her Vices too,
And showed the Dreadful End of One
Who goes and slams the Door for Fun.

The children who were brought to hear
The awful Tale from far and near,
Were much impressed, and inly swore
They never more would slam the Door.
__As often they had done before.

Hilaire Belloc

4 comments:

  1. Too funny. We are generally laid down by our own hand, some kind of Native American saying.

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  2. By the way, my sister's name is NOT Rebecca.

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  3. funny poem, Joyce! thanks for sharing. I do have a door slammer in my family. I will have to read this to her....

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  4. I love it. I think I'll post it on the fridge next time someone feels so inclined!

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