Poems
“The Siege of Djklxprwbz”
Before a Turkish town
The Russians came
And with huge cannon
Did bombard the same.
They got up close
And rained fat bombshells down,
And blew out every
Vowel in the town.
And then the Turks,
Becoming somewhat sad,
Surrendered every
Consonant they had.
— Eugene Fitch Ware
A soldier of the Russians
Lay japanned at Tschrtzvkjskivitch,
There was lack of woman’s nursing
And other comforts which
Might add to his last moments
And smooth the final way;–
But a comrade stood beside him
To hear what he might say.
The japanned Russian faltered
As he took that comrade’s hand,
And he said: “I never more shall see
My own, my native land;
Take a message and a token
To some distant friends of mine
For I was born at Smnlxzrskgqrxzski,
Fair Smnlxzrskgqrxzski on the Irkztrvzkimnov.”
— W.J. Lampton
Limericks
When you think of the hosts without no.
Who are slain by the deadly cuco.,
It’s quite a mistake
Of such food to partake,
It results in a permanent slo.
A young lady sings in our choir
Whose hair is the color of phoir,
But her charm is unique,
She has such a fair chique,
It is really a joy to be nhoir.
There once was a choleric colonel
Whose oaths were obscene and infolonel,
And the chaplain, aghast,
Gave up protest at last,
But wrote them all down in his jolonel.
— Anonymous
Legal Ode
In 1983 a driver hit a tree in Michigan. A tree surgeon repaired the damage, and the driver’s insurance paid the $550 bill, but the tree’s owner claimed $15,000 for pain and suffering; he said the “beautiful oak” was like someone dear to him.
A lower court threw out the case, and the appeals court agreed. The three-judge panel declared:
We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree,
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree’s behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy’s crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court’s decree.
Affirmed.
(Fisher v. Lowe, 122 Mich. App. 418, 33 N.W.2d 67)
“Money and a Friend”
— I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland, 1865
“Good and Bad”
If I was as bad as they say I am,
And you were as good as you look,
I wonder which one would feel the worse
If each for the other was took?
— George Barr Baker
Anthologist Carolyn Wells explains: “This remark was made by a bad, bold convict to his vain, virtuous visiting chaplain. Your personal answer to the question is an indication of your character.”
Table Talk
At a tavern one night,
Messrs. Moore, Strange, and Wright
Met to drink and their good thoughts exchange;
Says Moore, “Of us three,
Everyone will agree,
There’s only one knave, and that’s Strange.”
Says Strange, rather sore,
“I’m sure there’s one Moore,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister and brother–”
“Oh, yes,” replied Moore, “that is Wright.”
— Anonymous
A Poet’s Proposal
I think I can offer this
simple remedy for a part
at least of the world’s
ills and evil I suggest
that everyone should be
required to change his
name every ten years I
think this would put a
stop to a whole lot of
ambition compulsion ego
and like breeders of dis-
cord and wasted motion.
— James Laughlin, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 1978
Sweet Verse
James Grainger (1721–1766) had a lot to say about growing sugarcane — unfortunately, he chose to say it in poetry:
Whether the fattening compost, in each hole,
‘Tis best to throw; or, on the surface spread,
Is undetermin’d: Trials must decide.
Unless kind rains and fostering dews descend,
To melt the compost’s fertilizing salts;
A stinted plant, deceitful of thy hopes,
Will from those beds slow spring where hot dung lies:
But, if ’tis scatter’d generously o’er all,
The Cane will better bear the solar blaze;
Less rain demand; and, by repeated crops,
Thy land improv’d, its gratitude will show.
Grainger’s 1764 epic “Sugar-Cane” runs on for an excruciating 162 pages, with footnotes, waxing lyrical over every aspect of cane farming, from climate to pest control. James Boswell told Samuel Johnson that a reading of the poem at Sir Joshua Reynolds’ “had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh when, after much blank verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus:
“‘Now, Muse, let’s sing of rats.’
“And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified.”
Replies
Life is a jest; and all things show it.
I thought so once; and now I know it.
— Matthew Prior’s epitaph
Ah! Matt.: old age has brought to me
Thy wisdom, less thy certainty:
The world’s a jest, and joy’s a trinket:
I knew that once: but now–I think it.
— James K. Stephen, “Senex to Matt. Prior”
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
— Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H.”
I feel it when the game is done,
I feel it when I suffer most.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than ever to have loved and won.
— Gerald Bullett, “Footnote to Tennyson”