“Alliterative Love Letter”

Adored and angelic Amelia, accept an ardent and artless amourist’s affection, alleviate an anguished admirer’s alarms, and answer an amorous applicant’s ardour. Ah, Amelia! all appears an awful aspect. Ambition, avarice, and arrogance, alas! are attractive allurements, and abuse an ardent attachment. Appease an aching and affectionate adorer’s alarms, and anon acknowledge affianced Albert’s alliance as acceptable and agreeable. Anxiously awaiting an affectionate and affirmative answer, accept an admirer’s aching adieu. Always angelic and adorable Amelia’s affectionate amourist, Albert.

— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880

| Language

“Ough”

As a farmer was going to plough,
He met a man driving a cough;
They had words which led to a rough,
And the farmer was struck on his brough.

One day when the weather was rough,
An old lady went for some snough,
Which she thoughtlessly placed in her mough,
And it got scattered, all over her cough.

While a baker was kneading his dough,
A weight fell down on his tough,
When he suddenly exclaimed ough!
Because it had hurt him sough.

There was a hole in the hedge to get through,
It was made by no one knew whough;
In getting through a boy lost his shough,
And was quite at a loss what to dough.

A poor old man had a bad cough,
To a doctor he straight went ough,
The doctor did nothing but scough,
And said it was all fancy, his cough.

— Anonymous, cited in Carolyn Wells, A Whimsey Anthology, 1906

| Language · Poems

Lipogram in Verse

A poem without the letter s:

Oh! come to-night; for naught can charm
The weary time when thou’rt away.
Oh! come; the gentle moon hath thrown
O’er bower and hall her quivering ray.
The heather-bell hath mildly flung,
From off her fairy leaf, the bright
And diamond dew-drop that had hung
Upon that leaf — a gem of light.
Then come, love, come!

To-night the liquid wave hath not —
Illumined by the moonlit beam
Playing upon the lake beneath,
Like frolic in an Autumn dream —
The liquid wave hath not, to-night,
In all her moonlilt pride, a fair
Gift like to them that on thy lip
Do breathe and laugh, and home it there.
Then come, love, come!

To-night! to-night! my gentle one,
The flower-bearing Amra tree
Doth long, with fragrant moan, to meet
The love-lip of the honey-bee.
But not the Amra tree can long
To greet the bee, at evening light,
With half the deep, fond love I long
To meet my Nama here to-night.
Then come, love, come!

From George Wakeman, “Tormenting the Alphabet,” Galaxy, 1866.

See also Nevermore.

| Language