On behalf of one of my classmates, whom it is driving insane:
“New Hampshire, with accents fond,
Prefers to call a lake a pond.
But Connecticut, with more at stake,
Prefers to call a pond a lake.”
My google-fu turned up no results, so…
Does anybody know who wrote this, when they wrote it, etc?
Sounds very like Ogden Nash. Though I like to think he’d have been a bit less clumsy with the reversed order of the noun and adjective in “accents fond”. But maybe not.
Not Ogden Nash, but sure reads like an imitation of Nash’s style.
New England Pilgrimage by Phyllis McGinley
THE CUSTOMS OF THE COUNTRY
Connecticut, with much at stake,
Prefers to call a pool a lake,
But in New Hampshire and beyond
They like to call a lake a pond.
LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURINES
Vermont has mountains,
Vermont has pines,
Has highways innocent of billboard signs,
Has white front porches, neighborly and wandering,
Where ladies hang the laundry
When they feel like laundering.
Link for the rest: THE UNRULY SERVANT: “New England Pilgrimage”by Phyllis McGinley
She wrote from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Hm…just might be right [ie he might have mis-remembered it or somthin…]
Thanks Dopers!