Showing posts with label Ru-Mi-Lou Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ru-Mi-Lou Books. Show all posts

13 April 2022

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 5: 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' by James MacRae


For the month, the fifth of ten poems
find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

To think I once worked to celebrate this horrible man.

I first learned of John J. MacDonald – "James MacRae" – a few months after moving to St Marys, the small Ontario town he adopted as his home. That introduction came through The Four James, William Arthur Deacon's 1927 study of MacRae and fellow poets James McIntyre, James Gay and James D. Gillis.

The four are forever united by that book. Indeed, their very legacies are crafted by that book and its subsequent reissues, the last of which was published forty-eight years ago by Macmillan.

"Canada's Four Worst- And Funniest-Poets."

They're not the four worst, nor are they the four funniest.

It's all too easy to see the Four Jameses as being similar (Paper Lace), when in fact they were actually very different from one another (The Beatles). McIntyre, the most prolific, was the most grounded. Like so much of his verse, 'Ode on the Mammoth Cheese,' his greatest hit, was intended to raise a smile at country fairs. Deacon encourages us to laugh at it, when we should be laughing with it. Gay, a loving and loveable loon who thought himself Tennyson's rival, is the most fun to read. Gillis wasn't so much a poet as a prose writer. He's included for no other reason than to make for a great title.

The differences between these four men is most evident in their respective reactions to the 1880 murder of politician and Globe publisher George Brown.

Unsurprisingly, the tragedy inspired no verse from prose-writer James Gillis. James McIntyre writes of his sorrow in a poem titled 'Departed Statesman.' James Gay expresses great affection for the fallen man with 'The Honourable G. Brown.' James MacRae's 'Sad End of a Noted Politician' is something else entirely.

A different kind of loon than Gay, much of MacRae's poetry is taken up by hate thrown on women, strangers, Protestants, and Liberals. 

'Sad End of a Noted Politician' comes from The Poems and Essays of John J. MacDonald, (Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou, 1928), the poet's third and final book.

MacDonald's nom de plume is misspelled on the cover.

SAD END OF A NOTED POLITICIAN

On a cold winter night, cruel death in its might,
Deprives Mr. Brown of his senses;
Now the joys that attend all his honours must end,
And his long night of sorrow commences.

As he hears the decree, he determines to flee
To the gate of the dwelling of glory,
But that gate he finds closed, and his entrance opposed,
Although sad to his party the story.

Thus insultingly used, thus disowned and refused,
He goes on in another direction;
At that medium place, where the Papists have grace,
He asks humbly for rest and protection.

But in vain as before for thgat rest to implore—
He must follow his downward gradation;
With the devil despite he soon meets at the gate,
And there follows this sort of conversation:—
 
     G.B.—Disappointed and grieved, of mu comforts bereaved,
                 And my relatives all at a distance,
                 I have come to request of you leave her to rest,
                 And to ask your paternal assistance.

     DEV.—Oh! my corpulent friend, I your case apprehend,
                 And will grant you coveted pittance;
                 If you tell me the claim that you have on the same
                 You will gain to my dwelling admittance.

     G.B.—It is little you know in these regions below;
                You must think I'm a Papist or Paddy;
                As a Child if you prize the retailer of lies,
                I can certainly claim you for daddy.

     DEV.—You must still keep aloof till you give me some proof
                 On your noble and worthy exertions;
                 For I oft shall mistake if I venture to take
                 Every wandering stranger's assertions.

     G.B.—In my nethermost robes I have brought you some globes,
                You will find them a recommendation;
                     They will prove beyond doubt that I laboured throughout
                 In extending your own dominion.

     DEV.—By the stories they tell now I know you too well,
                 And to have one more prudent would rather,
                 For, exposing my plan by the course which you ran,
                 You have brought disgrace on your father.

                 For to win the applause some men for my cause
                 Some discretion and caution are needed;
                 But, regardless of this, you have acted amiss,
                 And my wise inspirations unheeded.

                 But your failings I feel have resulted from zeal
                 To encourage your partners in evil;
                 So forgetting your sin, you may quietly come in
                 But you must be exceedingly civil.

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01 January 2022

Unpleasant Verse for New Year's Day

THE SCATTERED FAMILY ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

Though mountains and forests and waters divide us,
Where fate and ill-fortune have led us to stray;
Though infidel strangers are living beside us,
Our hearts will together be dwelling to-day.

Aglow with affection, with vivid love burning,
In fancy, dear parents, to you we will flee;
From North, from the West, from above, where no mourning
Embitters the joys of the blest and free.

We hasten, dear parents, our homage to render,
Our hearts as our treasure lay at your feet,
And proofs to convince of our reverence tender,
To beg for your blessings at home's sweet retreat;

To think of the scenes of our innocent childhood,
Where, happy, contented, not dreamed to care,
We roamed through the valleys, the meadows and wildwood,
To view the fair blossoms then flourished there.

'Tis true that our hearts often linger around you,
From morn until evening when bound by sleep' schain,
Then dream of the cords of love to us that bound you,
And sigh to return when it frees them again.

To-day shall they linger more constant than ever,
Around our loved parents, around our loved home;
No thoughts of the world for a moment shall sever
Our hearts from that spot, or from there make them roam.

What prospect to children, to parents more pleasing,
Than that we this union might share!
In filial love be united unceasing,
No matter what fate or our foes may prepare.

'Tis true not on earth, for we'll soon be dismembered:
Shall death in the good love of others destroy
Can bliss then be reining and home unremembered?
Away with such motions of heavenly joy.
from Poems and Essays
John J. MacDonald
Ottawa: Ru-Mi-Lou, 1928