Dear Readers, we had another good week on the quiz! Everyone identified correctly the animals that  the poems and songs were about, and some people managed to also find the poem or song and the artist. So, this week we have Claire with a most creditable result of 20/30, and Rayna and Fran and Bobby Freelove with 30 out of 30. Well done everybody, and have fun listening to and reading some of these masterpieces. 

1. This is about a bat – it’s by Lewis Carroll, and is recited by the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Twinkle twinkle little XXXXX
How I wonder what you’re at
Up above the world so high
Like a tea tray in the sky

2. This is about a (black) cat and comes from the Poem ‘Black Cat’ by Rainer Maria Rilke.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

3. This is about a spider, and comes from ‘Boris the Spider’ by The Who, from ‘Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy’. You can have a listen here. Or not. It’s not quite ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again :-)’

Look, he’s crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he’s up above my head
Hanging by a little thread

4. This is about a snake, and comes from D.H Lawrence’s ‘Snake’. You can read the whole thing here.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

5. This is, of course, from Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell. My misspent youth comes back to me as I listen to it, as this was on a constant loop in my student days. If you would like to have your misspent youth come back to you, the whole 8.10 minutes is available for a listen here. What a very unlikely rock hero Meatloaf is. 

But when the day is done
And the sun goes down
And the moonlight’s shining through
Then like a sinner before the gates of Heaven
I’ll come crawling on back to you

6. This is, of course, from Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

7. This is from Al Stewart’s ‘The Year of the Cat’. And here he is, on the Old Grey Whistle Test. This takes me back to my teens. 

She doesn’t give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow ’till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There’s a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the xxxxxx

8. ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ by Duran Duran. Good lord. Every video I could find of this song features ‘picturesque’ local people, half-naked black women on all fours and captive tigers used as props. The eighties really were abysmal. Bug Woman is having none of that nonsense on her blog! But you can listen to the song here. It’s not all bad.

In touch with the ground
I’m on the hunt I’m after you
Smell like I sound, I’m lost in a crowd
And I’m hungry like the xxxxxx
Straddle the line in discord and rhyme
I’m on the hunt I’m after you
Mouth is alive, with juices like wine
And I’m hungry like the xxxxxx

9. This is a classic nursery rhyme (about a spider of course) so happy to accept whatever version you come up with here. 

The itsy bitsy xxxxxxxxxx
Climbed up the waterspout
Down came the rain
And washed the xxxxxx out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy xxxxxxxxxx
Climbed up the spout again

10. ‘The Bat’ by Theodore Roethke (one of my favourite poets btw). You can read the whole thing here.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen: