How to wreck a cute little poem
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (325264)
Rockingham, Australia
October 15, 2017 8:04am CST
We’ve been cleaning out the family home and I came across a notebook where my mother had started to write out poems that she had learnt in her childhood.
Mum loved poetry and could recite many of those that she had learnt at school. We made up a book of her favourites and would read them to her when we visited her in the nursing home. Many she would take over from us and recite them herself.
There were only three poems in the notebook and the first was ‘My Dad’s Wake-Up Call’.
The first stanza goes:
‘A little bird with a yellow bill
Hopped upon my window sill
Cocked his shining eye and said
Aren’t you ashamed you sleep head’
I googled the beginning and was a bit horrified to find that all the entries have a different ending to the one my mother learnt at school. The last two lines have been replaced with an ending along the lines of ‘I lured him in with crumbs of bread, and then I smashed his little head’. I think Mum would have been very put out to know her poem had been wrecked in this way.
The photo is of an Australian kookaburra.
15 people like this
14 responses
Re: old poems/nursery rhymes, some document film pointed out that they tend to have a very harsh ending, eg, 3 little mice, rock a bye baby etc. (must be the awful life people had in the old time, making them bitter?)
@marguicha (215134)
• Chile
15 Oct 17
Some poems and songs are made into "funny" or "shocking" endings. They did that when I was in vacations when I was a teen.
2 people like this
@JudyEv (325264)
• Rockingham, Australia
15 Oct 17
Some like doing it to prayers and Bible verses too. I'm not at all keen on that.
@JudyEv (325264)
• Rockingham, Australia
15 Oct 17
@Corbin5 @Juliaacv @Kandae11 I'm pleased she never heard of the awful ending. Although she was very mischievous in her own way she was a bit sentimental about her school days. She loved school but had to leave at 14 although she and her brother rode their horses in to night school for a while after that.
2 people like this
@sueznewz2 (10409)
• Alicante, Spain
22 Oct 17
Thats a nice thing to find (the book of poems) I prefer the ending your mum new... not the alternative you found on line....
1 person likes this
@m_audrey6788 (58485)
• Germany
15 Oct 17
I learned from school that a poem is also with a rhyming words..I guess it`s a standard but for someone who creates a poem by heart will just express it as by their heart 
1 person likes this
@silvermist (19702)
• India
20 Oct 17
I like your mother's version.I have come across some rather cruel versions of nursery rhymes online.
@Hate2Iron (15730)
• Canada
15 Oct 17
I like the fact that your mom's version is the best!!!
1 person likes this
@JamesHxstatic (29233)
• Eugene, Oregon
16 Oct 17
As a small boy in Texas, I learned that poem, but the last line was with "Ain't You 'shamed, you sleepy head"
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (325264)
• Rockingham, Australia
16 Oct 17
I guess that's the American version.
Mum wrote down a second verse:
'Get up, get up, said the little lark
And only sleep when it is dark
Never, never, let it be said
You've wasted your brightest hours in bed.'
Do you remember this verse too?
Mum wrote down a second verse:
'Get up, get up, said the little lark
And only sleep when it is dark
Never, never, let it be said
You've wasted your brightest hours in bed.'
Do you remember this verse too?
@teamfreak16 (43421)
• Denver, Colorado
18 Oct 17
Wow, what a pretty bird. Australia has all the cool wildlife!
1 person likes this
@ilocosboy (45157)
• Philippines
15 Oct 17
poem goes what poet feel, and maybe that is how your mother feel at that time.
