My Idyll Years

Casper David Friedrich's painting, above, brings to mind the fine tribute I recently received from a colleague, for whom I in turn years ago had provided a complete re-write of "The Sound of Music" to honor his father on the occasion of his 80th birthday, renaming it "The Sound of Nudniks" and featuring an entire cast of them.

Nudniks, that is.

Thought you might enjoy his tribute, given to me just the other day. It should give you some insight into my character. He insists it ought to inspire me to resume my writing, but I think the Wife's behind it. Clearly I'm getting on her nerves.

Once a fine Prof. name of Hayden
Recalled fields of verse he had played in
     When he was young
     With a much nimbler tongue:
He wishes those fields he had stayed in.

Fields of odes, fields of rhyme, fields of verse;
Fields of couplets, and triplets - even worse.
     Though a fine man, a
     Dept at a stanza,
At meter and rhythm he would curse.

When will said Prof. once more don it -
A rhyme or a villanelle or sonnet?
     His talents lie idle,
     (Did critics say, "dry, dull"?)
But give him a chance, he will flaunt it.

He never once shied from a quatrain;
No rondelet dizzied his wrought brain.
     On many an epode
     He seems to have rode
(Or have ridden, though not on a caught train.)

No, this fellow who was so multi-choral
Only traveled in fields quite pastoral.
     With often a dog
     To critique the eclogue,
Though with doggerel he had no real quarrel.

In sum this Professor's some talker,
But at writing anymore he's a balker.
     We miss a good jingle -
     They gave us a tingle -
Though as a poet he's a much better walker.