A Classical Sunday

I had long thought this poem to be lost to me.  It had been introduced to me by my charmingly quirky mentor on my teacher training course at Durham twenty years ago, and I had used it myself subsequently a number of times in my teaching.  But then.... well, my last paper copy of it got lost in one of my numerous transfers of dwelling, and, in the days before computers and the Internet, that was it.  I'm not sure that this was ever published.  And, after the advent of the Internet era, I had tried repeatedly to dig it up online, but had always come up blank.  Then along came my endlessly resourceful blog-buddy JES to make me feel dumb and inadequate by rooting it out it for me fairly promptly.  As with the other long-lost poem he found for me, Edwin Muir's Suburban Dream, conventional thanks are entirely inadequate, but duly rendered anyway.   My teaching tie-in to this, since it is an irreverent, post-modern subversion of a well-known Greek myth, was often to begin with looking at the most basic story archetypes - The Quest and so on: the hero has a mission, the hero has special attributes or items to help him, he has monsters to defeat, and a girl is part of his reward.   During that first year of teaching I happened upon a particularly nice example of the way we have all internalized these simple story structures we learn in earliest childhood from myths and fairytales, and understand them better than we often consciously realise.  I think in fact this wonderful moment occurred in a marking exercise that had been artfully devised by my ever-playful mentor.  We were learning how to teach Latin to middle school pupils using a series of books called the Cambridge Latin Course, which had an ongoing narrative about a young Roman called Quintus who was driven from his home in Pompeii by the great volcanic eruption in 79AD, and subsequently wandered around the rest of the far-flung Roman Empire having various adventures.  In the second or third book in the series he was in Roman Britain and found himself at the court of a British king (the name escapes me; unimportant).  Courtiers aiming to assassinate the king introduced a performing bear which, goaded or released from its chains, ran amok in the royal dining hall.  Quintus was promptest to respond, picking up a nearby spear and running the poor bear through with it as it advanced on the king - thus ensuring that the rest of his stay in Britain would be very pleasant, I daresay.   Our mentor had given us an example of a simple comprehension test that could be set on this Latin passage (a nice alternative to just plodding through it, translating sentence by sentence around the class), and provided samples of genuine student responses to the questions set.   One of the questions was, unsurprisingly, why did Quintus kill the bear?  The expected answer was something like 'to save the king's life' or 'because the bear was dangerous'.   One student had written "because he's the hero".   Brilliant!  I wanted to give him an extra mark.   Anyway, the poem (thanks again, JES)....       Andromeda   One can get used to anything; the cave Was dark, smelt bad, and twice a day the wave Slopped on the floor; however much she swept, Sand, bladderwrack and dead sea-urchins crept Over the stones. The monster did not care, But crouched preoccupied before the door, Fretted at unsuccessful business deals, Went out to fish and came back late for meals. And when at last the heaven-sprung hero came, Wing-heeled and gorgon-shielded, thirsty for fame, Red-hot with bravery, he found her sitting Upon a damp stone, busy with her knitting. The monster lay asleep, and dinner stood To simmer by a fire of smouldering wood. The sword seemed pointless, something was amiss. She stirred the pot. He had not come for this. He was too late. The voyage had been too long. The gorgon shield turned no ill thing to stone. The gold helm hardly dazzled her at all. She hung the iron ladle on the wall, Stood up and faced him. Was the moment come? But when the monster shivered in the gloom She bent and spread a cloth over its coiled Green limbs. The hero's attitude was spoiled. Had he looked close enough he might have seen A thin dry shudder where her heart had been, But saw no thundering wrong to fight about, Clattered his golden armour and went out; Finding her patient unrebellious shape No pretext for a plain heroic rape. The tide was rising, and she turned once more To sweep the dark sea from the door.   Graham Hough