Limericks

A lady who deftly crocheted,
A terrible temper displeted,
On finding when through
That a dropped stitch or twough
Had spoiled the contrivance she’d meted.

A newspaper man on the Isthmus
Said, “Colonel, now what about thisthmus?”
The Colonel said, “Write
That it looks like a fite,
But I think ’twill be over by Christhmus.”

Once a Frenchman who’d promptly said “Oui”
To some ladies who’d ask him if houi
Cared to drink, threw a fit
Upon finding that it
Was a tipple no stronger than toui.

Young Brewster wed Adeline Worcester,
But nobody knew what indorcester
In writing her name
To spell it the same
And make it read Adeline Brorcester.

There was a young man from Mont.
Who slipped on a peel of ban.
He fell on his head,
And what he then said
Was quite the reverse of “Hos.”

Punctuation’s abhorrent to Thos.,
And he loathes semicolons and cos.
He is such a bad boy
That a wave of great joy
Would arise were the kid taken fros.

— Stanton Vaughn, ed., Limerick Lyrics, 1904

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The Golden Key

A monk was standing at a convent gate,
With sanctimonious phiz, and shaven pate,
Promising, with solemn cant,
To all that listen’d to his rant,
A full and perfect absolution,
With half-a-dozen hallowed benedictions,
If they would give some contribution,
Some large donation supererogatory,
To ransom fifty murder’d christians,
And free their precious souls from purgatory:
When (he asserted) they would gain
A passport from the realms of pain,
And find a speedy passage to the skies.
A knight was riding by, and heard these lies;
He stopp’d his horse, “Salve,” the parson cried;
And “Benedicite” the youth replied.
“Most reverend father,” quoth the knight,
Who, it appears, was sharp and witty,
“These martyr’d christians’ wretched plight
Believe me, I sincerely pity:
Nay, more–their sufferings to relieve,
I will these fifty ducats give.”
This was no sooner said than done;
The priest pronounc’d his benison.
“Now, I presume,” the soldier said,
“The spirits of these christians dead
Have reach’d their final place of rest?”
“Most true,” replied the rev’rend friar,
“(Unless Saint Francis is a liar;)
And, to reward the pious action
Of this most christian benefaction,
You will, no doubt, eternally be blest.”
“Well, then,” exclaim’d the soldier-youth,
“If what you say indeed be truth,
And these same pieces that I’ve given,
Have snatch’d their souls from purgatory’s pains,
And bought them a snug place in heaven,
No further use for them remains.”
He said thus much to prove, at least,
He was as cunning as the priest:
Then put the ducats in his poke
And rode off, laughing at the joke.

— “C.J.D.,” in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, 1824

| Poems · Religion · Society

Limericks

A bookworm in Kennebunk, Me.,
Found pleasure in reading Monte.,
He also liked Poe
And Daniel Defoe,
But the telephone book caused him pe.

There’s a girl out in Ann Arbor, Mich.,
To meet whom I never would wich.
She’d gobble ice cream
Till with colic she’d scream,
Then order another big dich.

As he filled up the order book pp.,
He said, “I should get higher ww.”
So he struck for more pay,
But alas, now, they say,
He is sweeping out elephants’ cc.

| Language · Poems

“No!”

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No sun — no moon!
No morn — no noon —
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day —

No sky — no earthly view —
No distance looking blue —
No road — no street — no “t’other side the way ” —

No end to any Row —
No indications where the Crescents go —
No top to any steeple —
No recognitions of familiar people —

No courtesies for showing ’em —
No knowing ’em!
No travelling at all — no locomotion,
No inkling of the way — no notion —

“No go” — by land or ocean —
No mail — no post —
No news from any foreign coast —
No park — no ring — no afternoon gentility —

No company — no nobility —
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November!

— Thomas Hood, in The Book of Days, 1832

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“L’Envoi of the Cubists”

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When the last Impression is posted and the tubes are twisted and pinched,
When the youngest Cubist is throttled and the oldest Futurist lynched,
We shall rest, and, gee! we shall need it–come off for a minute or two,
Till the masters of all this rubbish shall set us agog anew.

Then those that were Cubists shall worry; they shall sit on a picket fence
And paint with a vacuum cleaner on the sides of canvas tents.
They shall have real models to draw from–a nude in a crazy quilt,
Or a maudlin, rhomboid Scotchman, descending the stairs in his kilt.

And only Picasso shall praise them, and only Matisse shall blame;
And no one shall care for censure, and no one shall care for shame.
But each in his own straitjacket and each in his separate cell
Shall slather the paint as he sees it, for the glory of Art that won’t jell.

— Carolyn Wells, in Such Nonsense!: An Anthology, 1918

| Art · Poems

“Belagcholly Days”

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Chilly Dovebber with his boadigg blast
Dow cubs add strips the beddow add the lawd,
Eved October’s suddy days are past–
Add Subber’s gawd!

I kdow dot what it is to which I cligg
That stirs to sogg add sorrow, yet I trust
That still I sigg, but as the liddets sigg–
Because I bust.

Add dow, farewell to roses add to birds,
To larded fields and tigkligg streablets eke;
Farewell to all articulated words
I faid would speak.

Farewell, by cherished strolliggs od the sward,
Greed glades add forest shades, farewell to you;
With sorrowing heart I, wretched add forlord,
Bid you–achew!!!

— Unknown, collected in Frederic Lawrence Knowles, A Treasury of Humorous Poetry, 1902

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Epic Nurse

When Scottish physician John Armstrong planned to write a book on “the art of preserving health” in 1744, it seemed a promising undertaking. Unfortunately, he chose to do it in blank verse:

The languid stomach curses even the pure
Delicious fat, and all the race of oil;
For more the oily aliments relax
Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph
(Fond to incorporate with all it meets)
Coyly they mix; and shun with slippery wiles
The wooed embrace. Th’ irresoluble oil,
So gentle late and blandishing, in floods
Of rancid bile o’erflows: What tumults hence,
What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.
Choose leaner viands, ye of jovial make!

This ran to four books and 128 pages, too florid to be useful and too queasy to inspire. Armstrong made a few more stabs at medical poetry, but he didn’t quit his day job: In 1760 he became a physician to the British army in Germany, and then retired.

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Limericks

A girl who weighed many an oz.
Used language I dare not pronoz.
For a fellow unkind
Pulled her chair out behind
Just to see (so he said) if she’d boz.

There once was a young cow named Zephyr.
She seemed quite an amiable hephyr.
But the farmer came near
And she kicked off his ear,
Which made him considerably dephyr.

(Thanks, Jon.)

A guy asked two jays at St. Louis
What kind of an Indian the Souis.
They said “We’re no en-
Cyclopaedia, by hen!”
Said the guy: “If you fellows St. Whouis?”

A bright little maid in St. Thomas
Discovered a suit of pajhomas.
Said the maiden: “Well, well!
What they are I can’t tell,
But I’m sure that these garments St. Mhomas.”

— Ferdinand G. Christgau

| Language · Poems

“Sonnet to Nothing”

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Mysterious Nothing! how shall I define
Thy shapeless, baseless, placeless emptiness?
Nor form, nor colour, sound, nor size is thine,
Nor words nor fingers can thy voice express;
But though we cannot thee to aught compare,
A thousand things to thee may likened be,
And though thou art with nobody nowhere,
Yet half mankind devote themselves to thee.
How many books thy history contain!
How many heads thy mighty plans pursue!
What labouring hands thy portion only gain!
What busy bodies thy doings only do!
To thee the great, the proud, the giddy bend,
And — like my sonnet — all in nothing end.

— Richard Porson, in Morning Chronicle, March 4, 1814

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