John Aubrey, Digressor

A limerick is primed in the Air

Yet the Rhyme may be lost on the Stair.

Aubrey’s Lives are like flowers

Overbrimming their Bowers

While Digression at sea sets all Fair.

The Limerick, unsuited at times,

Might yet, through extravagant rhymes,

Serve John Aubrey’s Chief Stress –

Hearsay’s Randomness –

And sail in exceptional Climes.

Unfortunate Edward de Vere!

Bowing low to the Queen (so I hear)

He let forth a Fart

So felt forced to depart

Overseas for many a year.

Returning at last, poor de Vere

Was received by the Queen that same year,

Who, as he bowed low,

Said, “I want you to know

I had forgot the Fart, my Dear.”

Will Shakespeare steps out of his house and

Salutes as he raises his brows and

Says, “Never blotted a line.”

But Ben Jonson quaffs wine

And scorns, “Would he had blotted a thousand.”

The circles of dusk-shadowed thrones

Stand at Avebury’s Greywether Stones

Like sheep in a Frame

(Thus Greywether by name) –

What Amazement to tread in these Zones!

Meeting Cowley, King Charles suggests cards,

But the poet cries, “No! Play at Shards,

That is, dip into Vergil

As a comforting vigil;

Look! Book Four from the greatest of Bards!”

Rising far to the South the pale moon

In December is frosted with Shine.

And as minstrels light fires

Along forest aisle Choirs

The Green Man engenders his Swoon.

Sir John Suckling, the Poet and Wit

Devised Cribbage, and earned much from it.

By secret card Marks

When contesting young Sparks,

He made thousands of pounds with this Fit.

Robert Hooke, who gave Newton advice

On the Inverse Square Law (“Be precise!”)

Watched with Aubrey in tune

An Eclipse of the moon

Which both Savants opined had been Nice.

They agreed that the moon seemed oblate,

All the more so regaining its Weight;

The eclipse having passed,

The Effect seemed to last

With recovery slow at this rate.

And how beautiful was that In-dent

Which the earth shadow cast on its tent

So each night this persists

Even after these Lists

And the Light from the moon appears bent.

All this seemed an Emblem of Memory –

The moon returning more Shimmery –

For its edges were glassed

As if slow days had passed

In the minutes it hid in its Armoury.

Edmund Halley, who lived by the stars

Understood well the Orbit of Mars.

And the Comet he named

Returned and was famed.

He died drinking wine from a vase.

Richard Lovelace, renowned for his Face,

Passing beautiful, worthy of Lace –

But he grew into Sorrows

Which took all his Tomorrows

And all that he Loved lost its Place.

Boys Learn best to twelve years, then it’s Worse,

After which Venus intervenes. Yes!

I have tried to teach Latin

But encountered this Pattern –

His hand on his Codpiece, Alas!

Signs and Wonders abound. Give an Inch

And Superstition takes Miles at a Pinch:

Lady Seymour has dreams

Of nine finches – then, it seems,

Has nine children by Someone named Finch.

In those lost days of calm just before

The cruel, Unjust Civil War,

Every house had its Harper,

Which with Verse was made sharper…

Now our Peace has been swept out the Door.

In that Hypocrite’s Rule without King

They denied every natural thing;

Songs and Maypoles were Banned

All across our poor land

Till King Charles brought again Sprightly Spring.

I never saw Maypoles so tall

As after the Republic’s blest Fall;

And as far as Lands End

Hilltop fires blaze and send

To the King, now restored, loyal Thrall.

A feather remote in the Air –

As I travelled through Stonehenge to stare

And make notes on its graves

And record Stones and Staves –

Still was floating above in that Glare.

I have heard that such Marvels abound

As the man whom an Oak sent to ground;

In his tomb’s winding sheet

He is struck on the feet

Which Blow sends his Brain back to redound.

Weeks before the King’s Indignation

I engendered my rapt Indagation

Amongst Avebury Stone

Which the gods must have thrown

Or cast down in a great Inundation.

The last Abbesse expelled from Connaughty

Was given a life pension. She was haughty;

She then lived in a Henge

And took her revenge

By living to a hundred-and-forty.

All of Wiltshire is like a Mapped Church

Where long Aisles are surrounded by Birch.

What are now Aubrey Graves

Some prefer to call Naves

But none could Surpass my Research.

George Monk, Duke – thinks aloud as we dine:

“On board ship a young man seemed to pine,

‘My sister brought to bed,

I would be there instead –

She’s my Wife and the Infant is mine.’”

He who masters the Mathematick Art

And Whom Algebra crowns with its Spate,

When he sees the moon’s Span,

He sees little more than

Mixed Equations set out, but less Light.

There were smiles at this Whimsical Flight

To thwart a loud and cock-a-hoop Lout:

Trousers stolen by night

Were returned much let out

So next day the Fool feared he’d lost Weight.

When the fairies cry Hattock and Horse

They mean mischief. The Reverend George Morse

Was at Old Lincolns Inn

When he heard their shrill din

And was whisked away, soon to be Norse.

Francis Bacon obtaining a hen

Steps out in the snow-shrouded sun

To test whether snow

Could preserve it or no –

But then falls into Death’s cold ravine.

Be truthful, avoid vain pretension;

Allow Strangeness its adequate mention.

Let my narrative hearth

Meet the long forest path

Of Discursion and endless Invention.

And no matter how much I Digress

There is More I would wish still to stress,

Like a man on his lawn

Seeing forests at dawn

And whose Limits he only must guess.

My friend, Thomas Hobbes, had turned forty

Before he considered Geometry –

As may quite often Happen

Euclid’s Elements fell open

In a library, which encouraged a sortie.

There he studied a Trope which seemed Odd

And throwing it down cried, “By God!

This cannot be true!”

Yet he read the Proof through

And exclaimed, “Here’s my Wholehearted Nod!”

So much so, that I afterwards heard

He was ardent; True Shape was his Creed:

He drew Lines on his thigh,

Or made bedsheets his Sky,

On which Theorems crisscrossed like an Ode.

Aware of the Threat of the Tower

It was Prudent to act in the Hour;

Hobbes withdrew into France

Where he seized every chance

To compose at the Peak of his Power.

There he walked much, purposing to Think.

In the crest of his Staff he brought ink

And a pen. In his book

He would note down each Nook

Before fugitive Thought thought to Shrink.

And my Friend did not read over-much,

For he liked to say, Staying-inTouch

He would, rather than Shaman,

Listen long to a Woman

Who had tended the Sick on their couch.

His Mother had birthed of a sudden,

Fearing Spaniards offshore. Now his Garden

Turned silent and sere

In his ninety-first year

But his Mind’s Voice continued to Louden.

We are still in that fortunate era

When everyone has his own aura;

Thus the Scientist-Seer,

Numbers-Poet with Flare –

While the Specialist is No-One’s Torchbearer.

I had so many ideas to chart,

I would often leave gaps in my Art.

I feared others might use

My fragmentary Muse –

Unconverted still, Head out of Heart.