Ode on a Thermot Urn

Virginia Graham is one of my favourite poets, though sadly she seems to be almost forgotten. I treasure my first edition of her only collection “Consider the Years”. Virginia was a contributor to publications such as Punch; she was a good friend of Joyce Grenfell and Celia Johnson among other well known names of the 1940s and her poetry collection is dedicated to Celia and her husband, Peter Fleming.

“Consider the Years” is a series of poems inspired by Virginia’s experiences on the Home Front in World War Two. As a member of the WVS, it is inevitable that the collection will include a mention of the kind of the things that we associate with village and parish halls. Here’s a lovely one about a tea urn, that gives a real flavour of her work:

(With apologies to Keats)

Thou still impure slave of thirstiness,

Thou foster child of mutton broth and tea,

How can a dictionary of words express

The inspissated gloom you raise in me!

What pungent legends hang about thy form,

Of bitter rooms where Chaos reigned supreme,

Where women wept amid the Salmon Spread,

Where weary kettles vainly sought to steam

On gasless rings; and soups that would not warm

Stood in congealed pools among the bread.

What visions dost thou conjure to my mind!

What scenes of sordidness do haunt thee yet,

Of streets laid waste, of hoses intertwined

Of tired grave people trudging through the wet.

I cannot look at thee and fail to smell

The sickening odour of a burning town:

I hate thee so! And yet do I discern

Draped on thy lid a little starry crown,

Laid there by firemen who have loved thee well

Click on the link below to read my summary of the life of another frequenter of the tea urn, L du Garde Peach:
https://sarahmillerwalters.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/lawrence-du-garde-peach-a-derbyshire-hero/

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