by A.A. MILNE (from WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG, published 1924)
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
 |
| Illustration: E.H. Shepard |
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And it isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"
Harold Fraser-Simson, who put many of Milne's poems to music, adapted the verse. The resulting song, Halfway Down the Stairs, was used in the first season of THE MUPPET SHOW.
Another Muppet interpretation of an A.A. Milne poem that my kids loved: Cottleston Pie, by Rowlf. Pooh sings “Cottleston Pie” in Chapter 6 ("In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents") of WINNIE-THE-POOH (published 1926). Pooh has just met up with Eeyore who greets him with a confounding conversation, so Pooh decides to sing...
"Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
(That was the first verse. When he had finished it, Eeyore didn't actually say that he didn't like it, so Pooh very kindly sang the second verse to him:)
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can't whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.
(Eeyore still said nothing at all, so Pooh hummed the third verse to himself:)
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don't know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie."