Sports Saturday
Watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics last night, I was delighted by all the poetry. The British, after all, boast one of the world’s great literary traditions, and since they couldn’t compete with Beijing in cost and magnitude, they made up for it by quoting Blake, Shakespeare, and James Barrie.
Even before I knew that poetry was going to be part of the ceremonies, I was thinking of quoting poetic passages that celebrate England. For instance, Richard II’s passage came to mind:
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England . . .
I also thought of Blake’s “Jerusalem,” and no sooner did I type down the idea than a children’s choir started singing the version that has become Britain’s unofficial national anthem:
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
The pageant would go on to feature images of the “dark Satanic Mills”—England’s industrial revolution—but before that we were treated to Kenneth Branagh reciting Caliban’s dream from The Tempest. In the context of the pageant, Prospero’s island became Britain:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
It was a great choice since, this evening, the isle was indeed full of “noises, sounds and sweet airs” delivered by a thousand twangling instruments that hummed around our ears. And then, I suppose, we had a version of the clouds opening up and droping down riches when a double of Queen Elizabeth parachuted into the stadium. (The queen has “a wicked sense of humor,” the announcers informed us, and, yes, it was a nice instance of British deadpan humor—that and Mr. Bean “performing” in an orchestra playing the theme song of Chariots of Fire.)
I also appreciated the testimony to children’s literature, which (as the announcers correctly noted) is one of Britain’s great gifts to the world. The pageant made a link between Peter Pan and the National Health Service, which are apparently linked because Barrie bequeathed all of the book’s royalties to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. (The announcer also noted–I hope America was listening–that the National Health Service is deeply appreciated in Great Britain, and we got to see actual doctors and nurses participating in the pageant.)
And then there was J. K. Rowling reading that delicious description of Neverland from Peter Pan:
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real.
These were followed by three of the great villains of British children’s lit—the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Voldemort—who were then exorcised by P.L. Traveers’ Mary Poppins.
Regarding that aspect of the program, Britain put its best foot forward.
