Friday 5 September 2014

'The Dong with a Luminous Nose'

'The Dong with a Luminous Nose', an illustration by John Vernon Lord 
in The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear, Jonathan Cape, 1984 and republished in 2012.

The text:



When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
  Through the long, long wintry nights;--
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;--
  When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:--
Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
  A lonely spark with silvery rays
  Piercing the coal-black night,--
  A Meteor strange and bright:--

Hither and thither the vision strays,
  A single lurid light.
Slowly it wanders,--pauses,--creeeps,--
Anon it sparkles,--flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.

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