Friday 25 May 2012

Butler, Butler, turning right…

Is the first line of a satirical ode that, from internal evidence, was written in 1955: The full text is as follows :

Butler, Butler, turning right In the forests of the night
Canst thou say who is to be Next Prime Minister but three?

Treasury or Privy Seal Which is best to do a deal?
Or a Secretary of State? Or wilt thou just co-ordinate?

Leader of the House or what? Can it be that there are not
Traditions whereby those who lead Automatically succeed?

What the time and what the tide? Time is always on thy side:
Thou art only fifty-three; Who knows what the tide may be?

… Can we fairly put it thus Say that thou hast missed thy ‘bus?

R.A.Butler was in fact (I think) appointed Lord Privy Seal in the Autumn of 1955. Famously, he never did become Prime Minister, but added celebrity (and Prince Charles) to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1965. The Trinity clock,telling the hours Twice over with a male and female voice, as Wordsworth recollects in The Prelude, used to punctuate my late-night lab-note writing-up. But I am straying into a thicket of hyphens . (Try Googling that, as a test of web-penetrability!)

P.S. another verse by the same author is remembered to concern Woodrow Wyatt, including Wyatting has broken out or similar phrase.

DJM 22nd. November 2007

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