SpokenVerse | Thank You for the Christmas Cake by Helen Maria Williams (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded October 2014 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
An elegant thank-you note. You might think that the traditional English Christmas plum cake would actually contain some plums. This was not so, although it did usually contain raisins, currants and a substantial amount of suet.
Christmas Cake followed on from an earlier tradition, Twelfth Night Cake "a large rich cake, often with a domed top, iced and decorated with ribbons, paper, tinsel and even sugar figures. A dried bean and a dried pea would be hidden in the cake and the man who found the bean would be the King; the woman who found the pea, Queen. If a woman found the bean, she got to choose the King. If a man found the pea, he got to choose the Queen. Servants were included in the division of the cake and if they got to be Kings or Queens even their masters had to obey. "
guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/twelfth-night-cake
The illustrations are by Isaac Cruikshank made in 1794 and 1807 - the same era as this poem.
Helen was quite a character. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Maria_Williams
In England the name Maria was pronounced mar-EYE-ah as, for instance, in "The Black Maria" the colloquial name of the police van in which apprehended criminals were taken to gaol.
behindthename.com/bb/fact/3052716
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!
An elegant thank-you note. You might think that the traditional English Christmas plum cake would actually contain some plums. This was not so, although it did usually contain raisins, currants and a substantial amount of suet.
Christmas Cake followed on from an earlier tradition, Twelfth Night Cake "a large rich cake, often with a domed top, iced and decorated with ribbons, paper, tinsel and even sugar figures. A dried bean and a dried pea would be hidden in the cake and the man who found the bean would be the King; the woman who found the pea, Queen. If a woman found the bean, she got to choose the King. If a man found the pea, he got to choose the Queen. Servants were included in the division of the cake and if they got to be Kings or Queens even their masters had to obey. "
guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/twelfth-night-cake
The illustrations are by Isaac Cruikshank made in 1794 and 1807 - the same era as this poem.
Helen was quite a character. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Maria_Williams
In England the name Maria was pronounced mar-EYE-ah as, for instance, in "The Black Maria" the colloquial name of the police van in which apprehended criminals were taken to gaol.
behindthename.com/bb/fact/3052716
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!
