Daddy Fell into the Pond
Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then
Daddy fell into the pond!
And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed!" Click!
Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft,
And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
Oh, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
When
Daddy Fell into the pond!
Alfred Noyes
• Alfred Noyes was an English poet born in Wolverhampton in 1880, died Isle of Wight 1958.. He taught English Literature at Princeton University, USA, from 1914 to 1923. His first wife died in 1926 and he subsequently married a widow, Mary Angela Mayne Weld-Blundell, originally married into the recusant Catholic Weld-Blundell family, settling at Lisle Combe, nr Ventnor, Isle of Wight. Alfred Noyes was a prolific poet and writer, publishing his first collection of poems, The Loom Years, at aged 21. From 1903 to 1908 he published five additional volumes of poetry including The Forest of Wild Thyme and The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems. In 1918 he followed with a short story collection Walking Shadows, SeaTales and Others which included the tale The Lusitania Waits, a ghost revenge tale based on the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in 1915 – although the story hinges on a misconception that the submarine crew had been awarded the Goetz medal for sinking the ship. In 1924 Noyes published another collection, The Hidden Player, and at the British Empire Exhibition, the same year, he wrote a series of poems set to music by Edward Elgar and known as Pageant of Empire. Alfred Noyes converted to Roman Catholicism in/about the late 1920s, and wrote about his conversion in The Unknown God (1934). In his later years he suffered from increasing blindness, and in 1953 he published his autobiography Two Worlds for Memory. In all he wrote about sixty books including poetry, novels, and short story collections. He died aged 77 years and is buried at Freshwater, Isle of Wight. (Wikipedia)
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