Alfie Noyes! Blimey! That takes me back to school and earnest lessons in rhythm. I ought to remember it by heart, Shadow, but it's something like:
The moon was a ghostly galleon,
Tossed upon stormy seas,
When the highwayman came riding... blah, blah
Up to the old inn door,
He knocked three times in the moonlight,
But answer came there none, etc.
It's got the same descriptive rhythm as John Masefield's works, especially another we 'did' relentlessly at skool:
Stately Spanish galleon, sailing through the Isthmus,
With a cargo of ... ... and amethysts... (something like that)
on to..
Dirty British coaster with a smoke-caked smokestack
Chugging through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of ..., ..., pig-iron,
And cheap tin trays...
The idea of the more languid words being descriptive of the smoothly-sailing galleon, and the short, choppy words painting a word picture of the bluff little coaster boffing along on rough seas. Very clever, Meester Bond...
:lol: :lol:
