Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Poems

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Biography

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of a pre- and post-World War I English upper class society, reflecting his birth, education and youthful writing career. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by recent writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling, and John Le Carré. Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies, many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg's music for the Gershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928) and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928). He is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.)

The Best Poem Of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

The Gourmet's Love-Song

HOW strange is Love: I am not one
Who Cupid's power belittles,
For Cupid 'tis who makes me shun
My customary victuals.
Of, Effie, since that painful scene
That left me broken-hearted,
My appetite, erstwhile so keen,
Has utterly departed.

My form, my friends observe with pain,
Is growing daily thinner.
Love only occupies the brain
That once could think of dinner.
Around me myriad waiters flit,
With meat and drink to ply men;
Alone, disconsolate, I sit,
And feed on thoughts of Hymen.

The kindly waiters hear my groan,
They strive to charm with curry;
They tempt me with a devilled bone -
I beg them not to worry.
Soup, whitebait, entrées, fricasees,
They bring me uninvited.
I need them not, for what are these
To one whose life is blighted?

They show me dishes rich and rare,
But ah! my pulse no joy stirs,
For savouries I've ceased to care,
I hate the thought of oysters.
They bring me roast, they bring me boiled,
But all in vain they woo me;
The waiters softly mutter, 'Foiled!'
The chef, poor man, looks gloomy.

So, Effie, turn that shell-like ear,
Nor to my sighing close it,
You cannot doubt that I'm sincere -
This ballad surely shows it.
No longer spurn the suit I press,
Respect my agitation,
Do change your mind, and answer, 'Yes',
And save me from starvation.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Comments

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Quotes