The Time Has Come....

"Style is the dress of thought, a modest dress, neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please" - Samuel Wesley

As I was trawling on the literature about the late Lord Denning ( Among other numerous achievements, he wrote such books as The Discipline of Law, The Due Process, The Family Story, What Next in the Law, The Closing Chapter, landmarks in the Law, among others), I stumbled upon a quote from a poem he had sprinkled in his judgment of what could be rightly put as his last case. Well, it was the case of George Mitchell Ltd v Finney Lock Seeds Ltd  (1983) 2 AII E.R. 737. The case involved cabbages! ( That is the much I can disclose, please be kind enough to follow up with the legal principle)

He wrote:

"The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things- not of cabbages and kings, but of cabbages and whatnots"

Where one could expect some legal jargon, Denning could plainly set off in plain English. His first sentences, like this one, remain powerful.


The rest of the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll is an interesting read. The actual stanza reads as thus:

"Time has come," the Walrus said, " to talk of many things: of shoes-and-ships-and-sealing-wax-Of cabbages-and kings- And why the sea is boiling hot- And whether pigs have wings"

I find the stanza exhilarating especially when Lord Denning used it in a Judgment.

I took time to understand the poem. There is an interesting discussion of it in my favourite blog called Wondering Minstrels that you can click here.

Similarly, another equally good read is  Glory of Garden by Rudyard Kipling. One of the stanzas reads:

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick/ There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick/ But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done, / For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

The last stanza reads:

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees/ That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, / So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray/ For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!/ And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

 I think the gist of what Rudyard is urging is that we are designed to accomplish a given task because "there is not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick...it can find some needful job".

Lord Denning quoted this good poem and like him, I totally love the last stanza..."..So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray...".