A Requiem for Wodehouse

When Keats died Shelley wrote "Adonais" and gave the slain bird a silken burial. When the sun had set on the world of Wodehouse on St.Valentine's Day in 1975, papers all over the world carried generous editorials giving the Lord of the English language his last and regal dues. Richard Usborne, Benny Green and others compiled biographies on the master, his letters and his craftsmanship.

The four and twenty years down this weary century saw no other author come any where near the output or the inimitable style of the incomparable Plum.

With all these, the void remains. We who are manikins can only offer a requiem.

                                        A Requiem for Wodehouse.

  O Wodehouse ! Blessed be ye, 
  Wherever you are, 
  May your kind soul rest in peace. 
  Many years ago, you breathed your humorous last, 
  Leaving, over the years of toil, characters eternal 
  This wayward world goes on, from sunrise to sunset, 
  While we seek in vain for the peace of Blandings. 

  O Wodehouse ! Who can ever replace you ! 
  The crafty and the cunning in this world are many, 
  The Molloys and  Pilbeams abound like slippery eels dipped in butter, 
  While Dukes are plenty, where is even one Lord Ickenham? 
  While weak Emsworths struggle with dominant sisters, 
  Our Woosters continue their agonies for want of Jeeves. 

  O Wodehouse ! The world has changed little, 
  Fleet Street residents continue to boil cabbage as if lives depended on it 
 And Office boys keep vigil -- to throw out vendors of patent medicines,
                                                                 and  insurance policies. 
 We have our share of the press and their senile publications, 
 Not very different from Lord Tilbury and his editors --
 And the Situations Vacant column like a dredger ever brings forth 
                                         characters from the underworld . 

O Wodehouse ! You who are over hundred, 
Wherever you may be, we imagine you seated 
With a pipe in hand, pausing for thought, 
As sentence after sentence reach to perfection --
And the phrase that ever silences 
Your readers in admiration. 
  
  O Wodehouse ! While patented humour lurked stealthily --and---
  Brought forth first a flicker, then a smile till the air was loud with laughter, 
  Our hearts turn from gladness to sadness as 
  Today we wait to realise that we can only pine --
  Like Tennyson -- for the touch of the vanished hand
  And the sound of a voice that is still.