Sixteen 20-second poems to wash your hands by
When it comes to washing your hands to keep the dreaded Covid-19 coronavirus at bay, the rules are simple. Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold, it doesn’t matter), turn off the tap, and apply soap, plenty of it. Lather your hands by rubbing them together. Don’t forget the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails. Keep at it for 20 seconds. It seems that the timing of the operation is key.
According to the epidemiology experts, less than twenty seconds won’t do the trick. Anything less than a thorough soaping, rubbing and rinsing (wrists included) and there is a risk that viral traces may still be lurking on your skin. Much more than twenty seconds – especially as, ideally, you need to repeat the exercise every two hours – and you may end up with chapped skin that’s rubbed raw and so even more likely to let the vile virus in.
How to time that perfect twenty-second hand-wash? A couple weeks back, the Health Secretary’s first suggestion proved controversial. Matt Hancock recommended singing the National Anthem while washing your hands. Predictably, republicans objected. More surprisingly, old-school monarchists said the idea was an affront to the dignity of the crown. Hancock’s next suggestion was to get your timing right by singing ‘Happy Birthday’ - twice.
At this point, the government’s PR people got involved and came to me and the great Dame Judi Dench. They knew I was a poetry lover and a propagandist for the benefits of learning poetry by heart. They reckoned that Dame Judi was not only a national treasure, but also the nation’s most noted Shakespearean actress. She won an Oscar playing Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. How about that rousing speech the Virgin Queen had delivered to her troops at Tilbury in 1588? Covid-19 is an even greater threat than the Spanish Armada. What did we think of that? The speech contains a memorable line – ‘Although I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England, too’ – but the line only lasts eight seconds and might not go down too well in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Judi Dench won awards, too, for her celebrated Lady Macbeth. Could we make a video of the great dame reprising the famous scene in which the murderous Scots queen washes her blood-stained hands while crying, ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!’? The full speech is just the right length, but it’s not an easy one to learn. It’s not very jolly and it’s not very poetic.
LADY MACBETH: Yet here's a spot. . . Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
The PR people then left us to our own devices. I thought a limerick might be fun.
There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped at line two
But even a full-length limerick only lasts ten seconds. Judi favoured a sonnet – either by Shakespeare or Elizabeth Browning – but you can’t get through a fourteen-line sonnet in less than forty seconds.
In the end, we settled on the poem most frequently voted the nation’s best-loved childhood verse: ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’ by the Victorian artist and poet, Edward Lear. The opening verse is just the right length and Judi Dench loves Edward Lear. She has played Queen Victoria twice on screen and Edward Lear taught Queen Victoria how to draw.
We made our video in Dame Judi’s kitchen and posted it on Twitter and Instagram. We got into trouble because we were washing our hands side by side, when we should have been standing at least a metre apart. Never mind. We meant well and we are now back safely in our own homes, sensibly self-isolating until this whole nightmare is over.
And while we are on our own, we have decided to learn some poems. Learning poetry is good for you. It keeps your synapses supple and your brain bouncing. Here is a selection of favourites for you to learn. Each one last twenty seconds – no more, no less. Get the soap ready, turn on the tap, lather up – and enjoy!
The poems all come from my anthology of poetry to learn by heart, Dancing by the Light of the Moon, published by Penguin Michael Joseph.
1. The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear (1812-88)
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
2. ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll (1832-98)
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
3. ‘Happy The Man’ by John Dryden (1631-1700)
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
4. ‘Jenny Kiss’d Me’ by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
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.
5. Daffodils by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
6. The Tyger’* by William Blake (1757-1827)
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
7. ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Robert Burns (1759-96)
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
8. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
9. ‘Home-Thoughts, From Abroad’ by Robert Browning (1812-89)
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!
10. ‘Wild Nights’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-86)
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
11. ‘Epitaph On A Friend’ by Robert Burns (1759-96)
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm'd,
Few heads with knowledge so inform'd;
If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
12. The Land of Counterpane by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
13. ‘Leisure’ by William Henry Davies (1871-1940)
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
14. ‘The Rolling English Road’ by G K Chesterton (1874-1936)
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
15. And Harry’s favourite – the poem that inspired the Invictus Games: ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
16. I’ve kept the best till last . . . it’s by Arthur Kent (1920-2009) and Sylvia Dee (1914-67):
Bring me Sunshine, in your smile,
Bring me Laughter, all the while,
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness,
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow,
Make me happy, through the years,
Never bring me, any tears,
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above,
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.