The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat’ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite ’em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.

— Jonathan Swift

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

— Augustus De Morgan

This unusual poetic form made its first appearance in William Browne’s 1625 verse collection Britannia’s Pastorals.

The text traces a single continuous intertwined line, involved with itself and never ending.

Palmstroem, old, an aimless rover,
Walking in the wrong direction
At a busy intersection
Is run over.

“How,” he says, his life restoring
And with pluck his death ignoring,
“Can an accident like this
Ever happen? What’s amiss?

“Did the state administration
Fail in motor transportation?
Did police ignore the need
For reducing driving speed?

“Isn’t there a prohibition
Barring motorized transmission
Of the living to the dead?
Was the driver right who sped … ?”

Tightly swathed in dampened tissues
He explores the legal issues,
And it soon is clear as air:
Cars were not permitted there!

And he comes to the conclusion:
His mishap was an illusion,
For, he reasons pointedly,
That which must not, can not be.

— Christian Morgenstern (translated by Max Knight)

A concrete poem by John Furnival, 1965:

“Hallelujah!” was the only observation
That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane,
When she tumbled off the platform in the station,
And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Mary Jane, the train is through yer:
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
We will gather up the fragments that remain.

— A.E. Housman

He stood on his head by the wild seashore,
And danced on his hands a jig;
In all his emotions, as never before,
A wildly hilarious grig.

And why? In that ship just crossing the bay
His mother-in-law had sailed
For a tropical country far away,
Where tigers and fever prevailed.

Oh, now he might hope for a peaceful life
And even be happy yet,
Though owning no end of neuralgic wife,
And up to his collar in debt.

He had borne the old lady through thick and thin,
And she lectured him out of breath;
And now as he looked at the ship she was in
He howled for her violent death.

He watched as the good ship cut the sea,
And bumpishly up-and-downed,
And thought if already she qualmish might be,
He’d consider his happiness crowned.

He watched till beneath the horizon’s edge
The ship was passing from view;
And he sprang to the top of a rocky ledge
And pranced like a kangaroo.

He watched till the vessel became a speck
That was lost in the wandering sea;
And then, at the risk of breaking his neck,
Turned somersaults home to tea.

— Walter Parke

[The poem can take either of two opposite meanings according as one reads across the lines or down the columns.]

— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings from the Harvest-fields of Literature, 1869