There was a naughty boy

When we think of John Keats (1795-1821) it is not nonsensical verse that comes to mind. We might think of his Ode to a nightingale or Ode on a Grecian Urn. His poem To Hope has the line – “O let me see our land retain her soul, Her pride, her freedom; – Perhaps that is a line we might pray today in the midst of our travail! Sometimes we stand and wonder is there a different land in which to stand, to hope, to live. Alas! In my next post I will share another one of Keats poems. However, it is to his nonsensical poem A Song about Myself that I turn today. I share the first and fourth of his fun 4 verse poem. Some might even suggest that this poem is a little bit biographical!

A Song about Myself
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took  
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at’s back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
To the north.

IV.
There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder’d,
He wonder’d,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder’d. John Keats

Prayer:
Loving God,
we quietly move through
this season of Lent. Soon
we shall reach Jerusalem,
not yet,
but soon.
Today hear this our prayer
for we seem to be always
in the not yet as we wish for
so many things to be different.
Help us we pray
to be in the present, and
to be all that
we can be
and
all that
we must be
to keep in tune
and stay in step
with the song and
the march of the
Gospel.
Amen.