Heres a virtual movie of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) reading one of his much loved poems "Market Womens Cries"
This timeless poem is qiute probably a straight transcription of the cries of a women selling fruit in a Dublin Street market of the time,and the sort of banter
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nter to attract buyers one can hear in many a street market even in this day and age. It is very much the simple natural poetry of the streets.Just visit a street market near where you live and you will hear something similarly inventive by the wittier market sellers as if to prove that some things never change.
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin.
He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2009
Market women's cries...........
Come buy my fine wares,
Plums, apples and pears.
A hundred a penny,
In conscience too many:
Come, will you have any?
My children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven;
My husbands a sot,
With his pipe and his pot,
Not a farthen will gain them,
And I must maintain them.
ONIONS
Come, follow me by the smell,
Here are delicate onions to sell;
I promise to use you well.
They make the blood warmer,
Youll feed like a farmer;
For this is every cooks opinion,
No savoury dish without an onion;
But, lest your kissing should be spoiled,
Your onions must be thoroughly boiled:
Or else you may spare
Your mistress a share,
The secret will never be known:
She cannot discover
The breath of her lover,
But think it as sweet as her own.
HERRINGS
Be not sparing,
Leave off swearing.
Buy my herring
Fresh from Malahide,
Better never was tried.
Come, eat them with pure fresh butter and mustard,
Their bellies are soft, and as white as a custard.
Come, sixpence a dozen, to get me some bread,
Or, like my own herrings, I soon shall be dead.
Author: poetryanimations
Keywords: poem animation Jonathan Swift yeats william blake donne keats walt whitman joyce kipling poetry poet poeme poesie
Added: April 28, 2009
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