Today’s Poem: Disobedience

A.A. Milne is far more clever than you remember

Lesser Ury’s Victoria Embankment, London, 1926 (Wikimedia Commons)

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) needs no introduction. If anything, he needs a disintroduction. His Winnie the Pooh books are so well known that they intrude in our vision, like rainbow glasses that make everything by the man seem giddy, gooey, and sappy. The truth is that Milne was very good at children’s art, and what we need is to cast aside the lenses that popular success, aided by the Disney corporation, have taught us to use when reading the man. We need to start over, reading Milne afresh.

Take, for example, the poem “Disobedience” in his 1924 collection When We Were Very Young. As in much good children’s art, there’s a joke in the poem for children, and another joke for adults. The joke that children love is simply that the disobedient one is not the sensible child but the foolish mother. Despite the command from her responsible three-year-old son, telling her not to go down to the end of the town, the willful adult disobeys. Off she goes and is promptly lost.

E.H. Shepard’s illustration for “Disobedience,” 1924

The adult joke is more complicated. Of all the poetic eras in English, it was the Victorian age that made the most concerted attempt to import the classical meters of Ancient Greek and Latin into English. The difficulty is that classical meters run on what’s called quantity, the long and short length of vowels, while natural English meters run on accentual stress, the ictus that makes us pronounce, say, “vapid, mushy, sloppy goo” as VÀPid, MÙSHy, SLÒPpy GÒO. And the two systems of prosody don’t go together naturally.

The best-sounding solution is to line up the stresses and the long vowels — which has as high a degree of difficulty as anything in English poetry. Another solution, however, is just to ignore the quantity, recreating such classical forms as hexameters with stresses instead of vowel lengths. And that’s the technique the later A.A. Milne uses in his 1920s “Disobedience,” replacing the spondees (long-long) and dactyls (long-short-short) of Latin with the spondees (STRONG-STRONG) and dactyls (STRONG-weak-weak) of English in his hexameter lines.

Which is, you have to say, a peculiar thing to do when writing a children’s poem. But there we are. That’s the joke for adults: JÀMES JÀMES / MÒR-ri-son / MÒR-ri-son / WÈATH-er-by / GÈORGE Du- / PRÈE gives us the six feet of a reasonable approximation of Horace’s hexameter — but in stresses rather than vowel length. The kids won’t get it. These days, few adults will get it. But the joke is present, turning a schoolboy exercise into a sing-songy triumph

A.A. Milne in 1922  (Wikimedia Commons)

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Disobedience

by A.A. Milne

     James James 
     Morrison Morrison 
     Weatherby George Dupree 
     Took great 
     Care of his Mother, 
     Though he was only three. 
     James James Said to his Mother, 
     “Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down to the end of the town, if 
you don’t go down with me.” 

     James James 
     Morrison’s Mother 
     Put on a golden gown. 
     James James Morrison’s Mother 
     Drove to the end of the town. 
     James James Morrison’s Mother 
     Said to herself, said she: 
“I can get right down to the end of the town and be 
back in time for tea.” 
     
     King John 
     Put up a notice, 
     “LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED! 
     JAMES JAMES MORRISON’S MOTHER 
     SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID. 
     LAST SEEN 
     WANDERING VAGUELY: 
     QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD, 
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END OF 
THE TOWN — FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!” 

     James James 
     Morrison Morrison 
     (Commonly known as Jim) 
     Told his 
     Other relations 
     Not to go blaming him. 
     James James 
     Said to his Mother, 
     “Mother,” he said, said he: 
“You must never go down to the end of the town without 
consulting me.” 

     James James 
     Morrison’s mother 
     Hasn’t been heard of since. 
     King John said he was sorry, 
     So did the Queen and Prince. 
     King John 
     (Somebody told me) 
     Said to a man he knew:
“If people go down to the end of the town, well, what 
can anyone do?”

(Now then, very softly) 
     J.J. 
     M.M. 
     W.G. Du P. 
     Took great 
     C/O his M***** 
     Though he was only 3. 
     J.J. said to his M***** 
     “M*****,” he said, said he: 
“You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-if-
you-don’t-go-down-with-ME!”

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