Yes, I spent most of Valentine’s Day in bed – with my sore throat, of course, and aching head! Not the very best way to spend a romantic day. Even so, there were highlights – a poem and flowers – to lift the spirits in my lonely hours…

On special occasions Chris writes me a poem or an ode, even when he himself is suffering from a nasty co’d. (Rhyming, too, is catching!)

 

THE POSSUM AND THE PUSSYCAT PART 2

                                     (The St Valentine’s Day Poem 2016)

 

The Possum and the Pussycat had often been apart

He stayed at home, she went away, right from the very start

and every year when winter brought the wind and rain and sleet

the Pussycat was far away in Queensland’s baking heat

 

And though the Possum, as his name suggests, was not averse

to joining his sweet Pussycat in Aussie’s sunshine burst

more often he’d be found at home in England’s wintry grip

 although the cold half froze his brain and gave his fingers gyp

 

But both agreed poor Pussycat  should never have to face

the bleakness of a winter’s chill of this benighted place

So every year she packed her bags and hopped onto a plane

which whisked her off without delay to Brisbane once again

 

 And always she would plan to be returning on the wing

when winter’s icy grip had safely melted into Spring

But sadly, all the best laid plans, they say, can come to naught

when winter fails to go away, the mood can’t ‘alf be fraught!

 

And so it was the Pussycat returned to England’s shores

too early, when the icy winds still moaned under the doors

“What’s this?” she cried in horror, chilled, despite her furry coat

“It’s so damn cold I greatly fear I’ll catch a vile sore throat!”

 

The Possum tried to soothe her with some talk of going to Spain

to catch the winter sunshine and relieve the cold and pain

but Pussycat said “Possum dear, you’re shooting at the Moon

we’ll simply have to sit it out and hope that Spring comes soon”.

 

But sadly, bleak old February’s still a million miles from Spring

and in it’s cold interior there lurks a nasty sting

for who should be struck down with winter colds and horrid ‘flu’?

It was, my friends, The Possum and the Pussycat, that’s who!

 

“Oh, “doh!”, I have a ghastly “blogged-up dose”, the Possum cried

“That’s nothing” croaked the Pussycat, “My throat feels like it’s fried!”

So there they were, between them both, a sad and sorry sight

with only paracetamol to save them from their plight

 

And so the winter days rolled on with little cause for mirth

the hapless pair just sneezed and sniffed and groaned for all they’re worth

“Oh, Possum” croaked the Pussycat “I need a little cheer –

my mood is strictly gloomy and my spirit’s down, I fear “

 

The Possum had a think, and then his face broke in a smile

remembering a date that he’d forgotten for a while

for, coming up, there loomed a special day, a day apart

when lovers of the world would give their loved ones all their heart

 

And thus it was the Possum scribed this very special note

entitled “To my Sallipuss”, and this is what he wrote:

“My special Sally, you’re the best, and, if you’ve got the time,

please make my day, and say you’ll be

                                 MY DARLING VALENTINE!!! “

 

Valentine poetry (from wikipedia)

The earliest surviving valentine is a 15th-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orléans to his wife, which commences.

Je suis desja d’amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée…

— Charles d’Orléans, Rondeau VI, lines 1–2^[53]

At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.^[54]

The earliest surviving valentines in English appear to be those in the Paston Letters, written in 1477 by Margery Brewes to her future husband John Paston “my right well-beloved Valentine”.^[55]

Valentine’s Day is mentioned ruefully by Ophelia in Hamlet (1600–1601):

To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

John Donne used the legend of the marriage of the birds as the starting point for his epithalamion celebrating the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, andFrederick V, Elector Palatine, on Valentine’s Day:

Hayle Bishop Valentine whose day this is

All the Ayre is thy Diocese
And all the chirping Queristers
And other birds ar thy parishioners
Thou marryest every yeare
The Lyrick Lark, and the graue whispering Doue,
The Sparrow that neglects his life for loue,
The houshold bird with the redd stomacher
Thou makst the Blackbird speede as soone,
As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halcyon
The Husband Cock lookes out and soone is spedd
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine

This day which might inflame thy selfe old Valentine.

— John Donne, Epithalamion Vpon Frederick Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth marryed on St. Valentines day

The verse Roses are red echoes conventions traceable as far back as Edmund Spenser‘s epic The Faerie Queene (1590):

She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.^[56]

The modern cliché Valentine’s Day poem can be found in the collection of English nursery rhymes Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1784):

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,

The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou’d be you.^[57][58]