Flanders & Swann Misalliance Lyrics

Flanders: This may seem a rather strange subject for a song, but we have written what is perhaps a rather strange song. Anyway, it's called "Misalliance".

Both: The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun, And many other creepers do the same. But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one, Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.

Rooted on either side a door, one of each species grew, And raced towards the window-ledge above. Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew, Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.

Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed, "Oh, let us get married, if our parents don't mind, we'd Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we'd Live happily ever after" said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.

To the honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock. "The bindweeds," they cried, "are inferior stock! They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft, We twine to the right and they twine to the left."

Said the anti-clockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle, "We'd better start saving, many a mickle macks a muckle, Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll Take a turn for the better" said the bindweed to the honeysuckle.
A bee who was passing remarked to them then, "I've said it before and I'll say it again, Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be, They'll never receive any blessing from me".

"Poor little sucker, how will it learn, When it is climbing, which way to turn? Right, left, what a disgrace, Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face!"

Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed, "It seems they're against us, all fate has combined. Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Colombine, Thou art lost and gone forever, we shall never intertwine".

Together, they found them, the very next day, They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away. Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight, To veer to the left or to veer to the right!