In the 1860s, W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911), poet and illustrator, dramatist, and librettist of “Gilbert and Sullivan” renown, abandoned a languishing legal practice to concentrate on light verse, short stories, and dramatic collaborations. Such comic operas as “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “The Mikado” prefigured the development of the American musical, as well as influencing later dramatists, including George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. A comic poet frequently grouped with his contemporaries Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, Gilbert shared the same penchant for nonsense words, as in today’s poem, “Sing for the Garish Eye.” Here, in trimeter octets with an ababcdec rhyme scheme and a repeated refrain, the poet has chosen some recognizable verbs — cling, cry, sing — while the bird-like subjects of those verbs remain unidentified by any of the standard field guides. Whatever exactly they are, roddling and thribbling away, they make the most of a raucous moment, specified as happening in May, but somehow outside the bounds of time.

Sing for the Garish Eye 
by W.S. Gilbert 

Sing for the garish eye, 
    When moonless brandlings cling! 
Let the froddering crooner cry, 
    And the braddled sapster sing. 
For never, and never again, 
    Will the tottering beechlings play, 
For bratticed wrackers are singing aloud, 
    And the throngers croon in May! 
 
The wracking globe unstrung, 
    Unstrung in the frittering light 
Of a moon that knows no day, 
    Of a day that knows no night! 
Diving away in the crowd 
    Of sparkling frets in spray, 
The bratticed wrackers are singing aloud, 
    And the throngers croon in May! 
 
Hasten, O hapful blue, 
    Blue, of the shimmering brow, 
Hasten the deed to do 
    That shall roddle the welkin now! 
For never again shall a cloud 
    Out-thribble the babbling day, 
When bratticed wrackers are singing aloud, 
    And the throngers croon in May! 

___________________________________________ 

With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by the Sun’s poetry editor, Joseph Bottum of Dakota State University, with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.