'Give All the Almanacks the Lie'

Imelda was no Harvey though she revived still-tender memories of her predecessor. I walked midday on Thursday to the library, got water in my shoes and squeaked through the stacks. Classes were cancelled in the early afternoon. I had a lecture to cover and couldn’t leave campus until after four o’clock. By then the rain had mostly stopped and some flooding had receded. It took two and a half hours to drive eleven miles home. Most traffic signals were stuck on the flashing red cycle and some lanes were blocked with abandoned vehicles. I drove over an interstate highway and saw more derelict cars and pavement under water. Dozens of people stood on the overpass documenting the flood with their phones. I thought of the first two lines of William Cowper’s “On a Flood at Olney”:

“To watch the storms, and hear the sky

Give all our almanacks the lie;

To shake with cold, and see the plains

In autumn drown’d with wintry rains;

’Tis thus I spend my moments here,

And wish myself a Dutch mynheer;

I then should have no need of wit;

For lumpish Hollander unfit!

Nor should I then repine at mud,

Or meadows deluged with a flood;

But in a bog live well content,

And find it just my element;

Should be a clod, and not a man;

Nor wish in vain for sister Ann,

With charitable aid to drag

My mind out of its proper quag;

Should have the genius of a boor,

And no ambition to have more.”

[About Cowper’s use of mynheer, the OED gives this definition: “As a polite or respectful form of address to a Dutchman or an Afrikaner: sir, mister (Mr). Also used as a title or sometimes substituted for the name of the man or the pronoun that would stand for this. In British use often humorous or ironic.” The Dutch (“lumpish Hollander”) were the Polacks of their day.]