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Elegy in St St Stephen's Churchyard
15 March 2002
That poetic feline "Lenny the Cat" has been at it again
on the Archers message
board, this time parodying Thomas Gray's Elegy
in a Country Churchyard:
 Prompted
by Ed’s suggestion that the Grundys should celebrate Eddie’s birthday
with a picnic in the graveyard so that Eddie could get used to the
view . . .
The ringtones toll the knell
of parting day,
The much-culled herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The salesman homeward drives his weary way,
And leaves the
church to floodlights and to me.
Now fades the glimm'ring landscape
on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the quad bike wheels its droning flight,
And lighted spliffs
arouse the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled
tow'r
The moping colonies of bats complain
Of EC laws that seem to lack the power
To switch church floodlights on and off again.
Beneath those rugged elms, that
yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The Grundys and their ferrets sleep.
The whinge of Mike the milkman
in the Morn,
The tractors revving from the agri-shed,
The falcons’ swooping or the commuter’s horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the casseroles
shall burn,
Or busy Clarrie ply her evening care:
No vicars interrupt their power to earn,
A weepie film and box of chocs to share.
Oft did the car locks to their
fiddling yield,
Their car boot sales and rabbits left them broke;
How jocund did they drive their mates afield!
And bent power steering beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their
useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The thirteen-minute annals of the poor.
Perhaps in this neglected spot
is laid
Some heart once pregnant with adulterous fire;
Hands, that the rod of well - something - might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy a well-known liar.
Full many a gem went out at
seven fifteen,
Or afterwards for those who had Real Player
And message boards where all could blush unseen,
And put their views in mustard out to air.
Their name, their years, spelt
by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame on message board supply:
And many a wandering posting round she strews,
That teach the unpopular
characters to die.
Read
Lenny's version of T S Eliot's The Wasteland
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