{"id":1003,"date":"2026-09-28T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T18:36:37","slug":"an-answer-to-the-foregoing-poem","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/an-answer-to-the-foregoing-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"An Answer to the Foregoing Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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An Answer to the Foregoing Poem1<\/a><\/sup><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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Arboreal though the natural habitat<\/p>\n

Of Possums may have been in far-off times,<\/p>\n

And apt though Possums are to play with rhymes<\/p>\n

Recalling feats a human acrobat<\/p>\n

Might envy, what a Possum is best at<\/p>\n

Is not the swinging creepers Tarzan climbs2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Nor yet the chimney-pot that poor old Grimes3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Got stuck in\u2014No Sir! certainly<\/em> not that.<\/p>\n

Ancestral memory reaches farther back,<\/p>\n

When water was the stuff he wallowed in,<\/p>\n

Reminding Possum when and how to tack,<\/p>\n

To jibe the boom and wag the tiller-fin.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

That is what Possum\u2019s godson5<\/a><\/sup> hopes to see,<\/p>\n

In Regent\u2019s Park, next Sunday, before tea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[Geoffrey Faber]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\nNotes<\/summary>\n
    \n
  1. 1.<\/a>\n

    King\u2019s HB\/H\/2a: GCF\u2019s sonnet \u2013 typescript copy sent to JDH by TSE.<\/p>\n

    \u2018Addressed to the Rev. Uncle Possum by his unworthy coadjutor, Father Faber, who, alas, will be unable to be present. September the 15th. 1937.\u2019<\/p>\n

    GCF\u2019s great-uncle was the Catholic hymn-writer and theologian Father Frederick William Faber, CO (1814\u201363), founder of the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge, London.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. 2.<\/a>\n

    Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875\u20131950) \u2013 author of the twenty-five adventure novels in the Tarzan series (beginning with Tarzan of the Apes<\/em> [1912]) \u2013 did not depict Tarzan as swinging from \u2018creepers\u2019 (vines or lianas). Only in the movie Tarzan the Mighty<\/em> (1928) did the stuntman-gymnast Frank Merrill start to swing from artificial vines.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. 3.<\/a>\n

    Thomas Grimes \u2013 the master chimney sweep in The Water Babies<\/em> (1863), by Charles Kingsley \u2013 tyrannizes the young orphan Tom, who is obliged to remain in ignorance and never to wash the soot from his body. But at the culmination of Tom\u2019s dizzying whirligig of travels and experiences \u2013 beginning with his transmogrification into a water baby \u2013 he finds Mr Grimes trapped in a chimney, supervised by policemen\u2019s truncheons which have no legs or arms. Grimes is, says one truncheon, \u2018the most unremorseful, hard-hearted foulmouthed fellow I have in charge\u2019. Tom\u2019s efforts to release his nasty old master are unavailing. \u2018So you go along, you kind little chap \u2026 I\u2019m beat now, and beat I must be.\u2019 Only when the begrimed Grimes weeps for his dead mother is he freed from the chimney; even so, he is bound henceforth to sweep out the crater of Etna, and is marched off \u2018looking as meek as a drowned worm\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. 4.<\/a>\n

    To jibe the boom is to swing the sail from one side of the craft to the other, to ensure a decisive change of direction from port to starboard or vice-versa. The tiller controls the rudder: pushing left turns the vessel to the right, and vice-versa. Wagging the tiller is something of a beginner\u2019s way of getting the feel of the course of the boat.<\/p>\n

    W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez, \u2018T. S. Eliot, \u201910, an Advocate Friendship\u2019, Harvard Advocate<\/em> 125: 3 (Dec. 1938), 5\u201310, 47\u20138; repr. in The Harvard Advocate Anthology<\/em>, ed. Donald Hall (1950), 317\u201327. \u2018I used to descend on him at his summer home in East Gloucester \u2026 He used to take me sailing in his catboat, and he could handle a sheet with the best in Gloucester.\u2019 For Alison Tandy (2 Jan. 1939), TSE recalled his \u2018young days as a sailor\u2019: \u2018I sailed in sloops and schooners not in ketches.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. 5.<\/a>\n

    JDH note: \u2018Master Richard Tom Faber a promising youth.\u2019<\/p>\n

    Thomas Erle Faber (1927\u20132004), physicist and publisher \u2013 TSE\u2019s first godchild \u2013 was to take a double first in physics at Trinity College, Cambridge; thereafter he became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1953\u20132004; Lecturer in Physics, 1959\u201393 \u2013 specializing in superconductivity, liquid metals and liquid crystals; he wrote Introduction to the Theory of Liquid Metals<\/em> (1972) and Fluid Dynamics for Physicists<\/em> (1995). From 1969 he was a Director of Faber & Faber Ltd, and he served as Chairman of Geoffrey Faber Holdings Ltd, 1977\u20132004. TSE was present at his christening, which took place on 27 July 1927. GCF noted in his diary: \u2018Eliot came up afterwards, & Thomas Erle was duly baptized by the Vicar Carnegie, in the Parish Church, present Godfather T. S. Eliot & godmother Frances Duke, the other godfather Eric Beckett being in Geneva.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/details>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An Answer to the Foregoing Poem1 Arboreal though the natural habitat Of Possums may have been in far-off times, And apt though Possums are to play with rhymes Recalling feats a human acrobat Might envy, what a Possum is best at Is not the swinging creepers Tarzan climbs2 Nor yet the chimney-pot that poor old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1003","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/noctes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}