"Jenny kiss'd Me" (original title: Rondeau) [1] is a poem by the English essayist Leigh Hunt. It was first published in November 1838 by the Monthly Chronicle. [2]
The poem — per its original title, a rondeau — was inspired by Jane Welsh, the wife of Thomas Carlyle. According to anthologist Martin Gardner, "Jenny kiss'd Me" was written during a flu epidemic, and refers to an unexpected visit by the recovered Hunt to the Carlyle household and being greeted by Jenny.
The complete poem is:
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add
Jenny kiss'd me. [3]
The poem was deemed worthy of inclusion in The Oxford Book of English Verse, [3] Hazel Felleman's Best-Loved Poems of the American People, and Martin Gardner's Best Remembered Poems. [4]
Gardner adds that Paul Dehn parodied the poem by changing its last two lines to "Say I've had a filthy cold/Since Jenny kiss'd me."
 |
In Jennifer Worth's book, Shadows of the Workhouse, an edited version of the poem is included at the beginning of a chapter. Sister Monica Joan recites the poem to midwife Jenny Lee in season 3 of Call the Midwife .
The poem is featured in the 1982 Serbian film A Tight Spot during an English class and last three lines were also quoted in the elevator in the 2015 American romantic fantasy film The Age of Adaline , when Ellis (Michiel Huisman) first met Adaline (Blake Lively) on New Year's Eve 2014, when she called herself "Jennifer".
In The Twilight Zone episode "The Fugitive," Old Ben quotes the poem to Jenny after she gives him a kiss.
Grandpa Amos McCoy (played by Walter Brennan ), recites the last four lines of the poem at the end of the Season 2 episode ("Do You Kiss Your Wife") of The Real McCoys , while Grandpa Zebulon Walton (played by Will Geer), recites the poem in Season 2 Episode 24 of "The Waltons" entitled "The Five-Foot Shelf" (1974)
The first seven lines are quoted at the end of chapter 16 of John Dickson Carr’s “To Wake the Dead” (first published 1938).[ citation needed ]
"Invictus" is a short poem by the Victorian era British poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was written in 1875 and published in 1888 in his first volume of poems, Book of Verses, in the section Life and Death (Echoes).
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of Looking-glass world.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
James Henry Leigh Hunt, best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet.
William Allingham was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem "The Faeries" was much anthologised. But he is better known for his posthumously published Diary, in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham, was a well-known watercolourist and illustrator.
Jenny Joseph was an English poet, best known for the poem "Warning".
"To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60). It was published posthumously in 1681.
"This Be The Verse" is a lyric poem in three stanzas with an alternating rhyme scheme, by the English poet Philip Larkin (1922–1985). It was written around April 1971, was first published in the August 1971 issue of New Humanist, and appeared in the 1974 collection High Windows.
The spasmodic poets were a group of British poets of the Victorian era. The term was coined by William Edmonstoune Aytoun with some derogatory as well as humorous intention. The epithet itself is attributed, by Thomas Carlyle, to Lord Byron.
A rondeau is a form of medieval and Renaissance French poetry, as well as the corresponding musical chanson form. Together with the ballade and the virelai it was considered one of three formes fixes, and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries. It is structured around a fixed pattern of repetition of verse with a refrain. The rondeau is believed to have originated in dance songs involving singing of the refrain by a group alternating with the other lines by a soloist. The term "Rondeau" is used both in a wider sense, covering older styles of the form which are sometimes distinguished as the triolet and rondel, and in a narrower sense referring to a 15-line style which developed from these forms in the 15th and 16th centuries. The rondeau is unrelated to the much later instrumental dance form that shares the same name in French baroque music, which is more commonly called the rondo form in classical music.
Now I lay me down to sleep is a Christian children's bedtime prayer from the 18th century.
The Green Eye of the Yellow God, a 1911 poem by J. Milton Hayes, is a famous example of the genre of "dramatic monologue", a music hall staple in the early twentieth century. The piece was written for and performed by actor and monologist Bransby Williams. It has often been misattributed to Rudyard Kipling, who classed its author as being among his many imitators, and often parodied, most famously by Billy Bennett as The Green Tie on the Little Yellow Dog.
Façade is a series of poems by Edith Sitwell, best known as part of Façade – An Entertainment in which the poems are recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton. The poems and the music exist in several versions.
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture. Immediately popular after the poem's publication in 1845, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Some consider it the best poem ever written. As such, modern references to the poem continue to appear in popular culture.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat" is a poem recited by the Mad Hatter in chapter seven of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is a parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me is a novelty album by actress, model and Playmate Jayne Mansfield in 1964. She recited Shakespeare's sonnets and poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth, Herrick, and others against a background of Tchaikovsky's music for the album. The album cover depicted a bouffant-coiffed Mansfield with lips pursed and breasts barely covered by a fur stole, posing between busts of the Russian composer and the Bard of Avon.
"You Are Old, Father William" is a poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in his 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is recited by Alice in Chapter 5, "Advice from a Caterpillar". Alice informs the Caterpillar that she has previously tried to repeat "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" and has had it all come wrong as "How Doth the Little Crocodile". The Caterpillar asks her to repeat "You Are Old, Father William", and she recites it.
Bacchus and Ariadne is a poem by Leigh Hunt written and published in 1819. The result of three years of work, the poem tells the Greek myth of Hero and Leander, two lovers, and the story of their forlorn fate. Hunt began working on the poem during the summer of 1816, arousing the interest of the publisher John Taylor, and despite repeated delays to allow Hunt to deal with other commitments the poem was finished and published in a collection 1819. Hunt later claimed in a poem about Bacchus and Ariadne that he was seeking to humanise myths and make them more understandable to the common people. The collection was well received by contemporary critics and poets, including Thomas Carlyle, while more modern writers such as Edmund Blunden have criticised the flow of its narrative.
Jenny Kissed Me is a 1985 Australian drama film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. The director calls it a "tearjerker for men". It is inspired by Leigh Hunt's poem Jenny kiss'd Me, which appears in the opening credits.
 | This article related to a poem is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |