A little New Year poem from Ogden Nash

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson's inspiring poem about the bells that ring in the New Year has been featured on here, as has Charles Lamb's sad poem The Old Familiar Faces.  

The American humourist Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971) wrote a little verse about the New Year in a rather different spirit:

Good Riddance, But Now What?

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year. 

The poem's title is spot on. It expresses very well what some people feel at the end of yet another horrible year: they can't wait to see the back of it. Good riddance indeed! 

The title also suggests that the coming year might be even worse. We have no idea what is in store for us; we shall just have to wait and see what comes.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

The Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas is - ostensibly - about the increasing number of unusual gifts received by a very lucky person. 

The final verse lists them all:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve lords a leaping,
Eleven ladies dancing,
Ten pipers piping,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a milking,
Seven swans a swimming,
Six geese a laying,
Five gold rings.
Four colley birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree. 

Just like the carol The Three Ships, The Twelve Days  of Christmas has inspired some beautiful artwork.  

Here are two examples of cards that I like very much:

This is a seasonal postage stamp from 1977:

I have always liked this carol because of its cheerful tune and the pictures it inspires; I had no idea that it is believed to have hidden meanings:

More about John Buchan and the colour green

Looking for reasonably significant references to the colour green in John Buchan's books involves eliminating a very large number of descriptions of natural features such as uplands and downs, mountains and moors, water and trees, not to mention discarding a large quantity of protective outdoor clothing such as felt hats, capes and tweed coats. The much smaller number of occurrences of specific shades such as apple green and olive green are not of much interest either. 

After the routine references to the colour green have been removed, some examples of interest remain; it has taken two articles to cover what might be described as “the best of the rest”. 

The first article about John Buchan and the colour green  contains green references taken from his writings; this article contains more such references, and it also lists some green people and places of interest in his life.

Some miscellaneous green references
This section of the article has been inspired by some amusing material in Buchan's Prince of the Captivity that I quoted in the article about his Island of Sheep: 

“There were too many houses at Bournemouth, and too many people at Broadstairs, and a horrible band in green jackets at Eastbourne, and a man who made ugly faces at Littlehampton...”

Using that as a model, I have listed some miscellaneous, mostly minor, green references from various novels.

There is an archaeologist called Wintergreen, some green lizards, some wallpaper with pink and green parrots, an envelope heavily sealed with green wax and a strange girl dressed in an unusual shade of green who wears one green glove in The Dancing Floor; there is a Liberal candidate called Orlando Greenstone, a knitted tea-cosy in purple and green and an ancient hostelry called the Green Tree in Castle Gay.

There is a man called Green, a little green lamp, more green lizards, a Border dining club whose members wear faded green coats, green face paint and a translucent green tablet in The Island of Sheep; there is veined green marble, green alabaster, green imperial jade, two green doors and an emerald necklace in Huntingtower.

There is a man called Greenlees and a green drawing room in A Gap in the Curtain; there are green crabs, a green awning, green wooden seats and many references to Greenland in A Prince of the Captivity; in addition to the material already quoted, there are green sun-shutters, green sickness, a pink and green hearthrug and a green dressing gown in Greenmantle.