“Oh, Mr. Thompson,
It isn’t any good;
I shouldn’t like to vote for you,
So I won’t pretend I should;
I know that you’re the noblest
Of all the human race....”
That shows the audience that _face_ is coming very soon, and they all
get ready to burst themselves.
“I haven’t a doubt, if you get in,
The Golden Age will soon begin--
But I DON’T LIKE--your FACE.”
* SOLUTION: It comes of my having a sniff (see page 83).
At this point several of the audience will simply slide off their seats
on to the floor and wallow about there, snorting.
The next verse had better be a love-verse.
Thompson wooed a lovely maid
Every evening in the shade,
Meaning, I am much afraid,
To hide his ugly head...
_Head_ is not very good, I admit, but we must have _said_ in the last
line, and as we were mad enough to have rhymes in the first verse we
have got to go on with it.
But when he proposed one night--
Did it by electric light--
Mabel, who retained her sight,
Just looked at him and said:--
Now you see the idea?
“Oh, Mr. Thompson,
It isn’t any good;
I shouldn’t like to marry you,
So I won’t pretend I should;
I know that you have riches
And a house in Eaton Place ...
(Here all the audience pulls out its handkerchief)
I haven’t a doubt that you must be
The properest possible match for me,
But I DON’T LIKE--your FACE.”
I have got another verse to this song, but I will not give it to you
now, as I think the Editor is rather bored with it. It is fortunate
for Mr. Bubble that he does not have to perform before an audience of
Editors.
Having written the lyric the next thing to do is to get a composer
to compose music for it, and then you get it published. This is most
difficult, as composers are people who don’t ever keep appointments,
and music publishers like locking up lyrics in drawers till the mice
have got at the chorus and the whole thing is out of date.
By the time that this song is ready Mr. Bubble may quite possibly have
exhausted the _face-motif_ altogether and struck a new vein. Then we
shall have wasted our labour. In that case we will arrange to have it
buried in somebody’s grave (Mr. Bubble’s for choice), and in A.D. 2000
it will be dug up by antiquaries and deciphered. Even a lyric like this
may become an Old Manuscript in time. I ought to add that I myself have
composed the music for this lyric, but I really cannot undertake to
explain composing as well as poetry.
The serious lyric or Queen’s Hall ballad is a much easier affair. But
I must first warn the student that there are some peculiar customs
attaching to this traffic which may at first sight appear discouraging.
When you have written a good lyric and induced someone to compose a
tune for it your first thought will be, “I will get Mr. Throstle to
sing this, and he will pay me a small fee or royalty per performance”;
and this indeed would be a good arrangement to make. The only objection
is that Mr. Throstle, so far from paying any money to the student,
will expect to be paid about fifty pounds by the student for singing
his lyric. I do not know the origin of this quaint old custom, but the
student had better not borrow any money on the security of his first
lyric.
For a serious or Queen’s Hall lyric all that is necessary is to think
of some natural objects like the sun, the birds, the flowers or the
trees, mention them briefly in the first verse and then in the second
verse draw a sort of analogy or comparison between the natural object
and something to do with love. The verses can be extremely short,
since in this class of music the composer is allowed to spread himself
indefinitely and can eke out the tiniest words.
Here is a perfect lyric I have written. It is called, quite simply,
_Evening_:--
Sunshine in the forest,
Blossom on the tree,
And all the brave birds singing
For you--and me.
Kisses in the sunshine,
Laughter in the dew,
And all the brave world singing
For me--and you.
I see now that the dew has got into the second verse, so it had better
be called quite simply “The Dawn.”
You notice the artistic parallelism of this lyric; I mean, “The brave
birds singing” in one verse and “The brave _world_ singing” in the
next, That is a tip I got from Hebrew poetry, especially the Psalms:
“One day telleth another; and one night certifieth another,” and so on.
It is a useful trick to remember, and is employed freely by many modern
writers, the author of “The King’s Regulations,” for example, who in
Regulation 1680 has the fine line:--
“Disembarkations are carried out in a similar manner to embarkations.”
That goes well to the Chant in C major by Mr. P. Humphreys.
But I am wandering. It is becoming clear to me now that I shall not
have time to do Blank Verse or Hymns (Ancient and Modern) in this
lecture, after all, so I will give you a rough outline of that special
kind of lyric, the Topical Song. All that is required for this class of
work is a good refrain or central idea; when you have got that, you
see how many topics you can tack on to it. But if you can tack on Mr.
Winston Churchill you need not bother about the others.
Our central idea will be “Rations,” and the song will be called “Heaps
and Heaps”:--