Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Edward Lear, who lived from 1812 to 1888. You might know that he was a landscape painter

by profession, but his poetical masterwork is a book of nonsense, which includes poems like The Owl and the Pussycat

and the Jumblies, which I have read before on this show. But today's poem that I'm going to read

is called the Courtship of the Yonge Bongi Bo. And it seemed like the right time. It's been a

little while since I did a poem geared, especially

towards the younger listeners, but if you like language, then I think you will enjoy Edward Lear.

So hopefully you'll listen to this anyway. It's a little long, and it's a narrative poem,

so I'm going to go ahead and just read it the one time and then let you just have some fun with

it. But this is how it goes.

On the coast of the Coromandel,

where the early pumpkins blow,

in the middle of the woods,

lived the yongi-bongi-bongy-bow.

Two old chairs and half a candle,

one old jug without a handle,

these were all his worldly goods. In the middle of the woods. These were all his worldly goods in the middle of the woods.

These were all the worldly goods of the yongy-bongy-bongy bow. Of the yongy-bongy-bon-y-bow.

Once among the bong-tree's walking where the early pumpkins blow, to a little heap of stones came the yongy-bongy-bongy-bow. There he heard a lady talking to some milk-white

hens of dorking. Tis the lady-jingling Jones on that little heap of stones, it's the lady-jingling

Jones, said the yongy-bongy-bongy-bow, said the yongy-bongy-bongy-bow. Lady jingly, lady-jingly, sitting where the pumpkins blow,

will you come and be my wife? said the yongy-bongy-bongy-bow. I am tired of living singly on this

...