John Mouldy
I spied John Mouldy in his celler,
Deep down twenty steps of stone;
In the dusk he sat a-smiling
Smiling there all alone.He read no book, he snuffed no candle;
The rats ran in, the rats ran out,
And far and near, the drip of water
Went whisp’ring about.The dusk was still, with dew a-falling,
I saw the Dog-star bleak and grim,
I saw a slim brown rat of Norway
Creep over him.I spied John Mouldy in his celler,
Deep down twenty steps of stone;
In the dusk he sat a-smiling
Smiling there all alone.
Here’s a poem to encourage even the most indifferent readers and writers!
English tuition allows students to read lots of different texts so that their understanding of how language works extends far beyond what they might read at school.
When students encounter different writers, they quickly pick up ways of creating their own stories too.
All writers ‘borrow’ from other writers and English Tuition gives students the opportunity to try out new types of writing and to take their writing to different levels and places.
In De La mare’s poem above students love the witty oddity of the poem’s title. Questions are asked and the poem is a brilliant generator of ideas…
1) Who is the eponymous ‘hero’ of the poem- and how relevant is his name John Mouldy? Juxtapositions are a succinct way of gaining the reader’s attention. We are compelled to read on…place the ordinary next to the extraordinary and see what is created…
2) How sinister is the ‘smiling’ behaviour in the poem? Why are smiles sometimes so unsettling?
3) Why does the poet repeat the first and last stanzas? What is the effect of this form of refrain?
4) De La Mare utilises alliteration in the poem several times.. Think about the effect of the alliteration.
5) Think about the setting of the poem and how the ‘celler’ creates certain Gothic/ unsettling expectations. The speaker is very specific about the number of stairs down to the celler. WHY? What is the EFFECT?
6) Who is the narrator of the poem and what effect is created through his/her act of ‘spying’ on the ever smiling John Mouldy? have we any doubts about the motivations of the narrator?
Walter De la Mare is also famous for his intriguing poem The Listeners , where the calling visitor is ignored by house crammed with (eavesdropping) ghosts! The poem is beautiful ambiguous and perfectly understated.
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.What could be more intriguing than the prospect that the visitor knows about the listeners and wants them to pass on a message to an unnamed ‘them’? And that he ‘kept’ his promise? What we wonder, is the purpose of his visit after all? And who is listening to every sound he makes?Wonderful!