A tiger, by taste anthropophagous,
Felt a yearning inside his oesophagus;
He spied a fat Brahmin
And growled, “What’s the harm in
A peripatetic sarcophagus?”
— Anonymous
Poems
Altered States
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.
A handsome young gent down in Fla.
Collapsed in a hospital ca.
A young nurse from Me.
Sought to banish his pe.
And shot him. Now what could be ha.?
There was a young lady from Del.
Who was most undoubtedly wel.
That to dress for a masque
Wasn’t much of a tasque,
But she cried, “What the heck will my fel.?”
There are plenty of people in Md.
Who think that their state is a fd.
It seems odd to find
That they don’t really mind
That Wis., not Md., is Dd.
See This Sceptred Isle.
Misc
- As Britain prepared for World War I, officers were required to have their swords sharpened.
- Wordsworth’s “The Rainbow” has an average word length of 3.08 letters.
- sin 10° × sin 50° × sin 70° = 1/8
- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE = I SWEAR HE’S LIKE A LAMP
- “I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“Address to My Sweetheart”
— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880
In a Word
semiopathy
n. the tendency to read humorously inappropriate meanings into signs
CROSS CHILDREN WALK. Don’t listen to their screams,
But watch the CAUTION MEN AT WORK. It seems
They’re making sure that all DEAF CHILDREN DRIVE
CAREFULLY. Now let us look alive,
And take TRUCKS TURNING (named for Captain Trucks,
Who turned here when he went out hunting ducks).
Here on a sign the advertising’s clear
(Though deer can’t tell the time) for WATCH FOR DEER.
At FREE MUNICIPAL PARKING let us pause,
And wonder who enslaved it, for what cause.
A DANGEROU is what we’ll hope to see:
DANGEROUS CROSSINGs certainly abound.
Now will they leap across from tree to tree,
Or buck the passing traffic on the ground?
— Ralph P. Boas Jr.
“Doppelgänger”
Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush –
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever –
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone –
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife.
— J.A. Lindon
Mater Goose
Studious John Horner,
Of Latin no scorner,
In the second declension did spy
How nouns there are some
Which ending in um
Do not make their plural in i.
Jack and Jill
Have studied Mill,
And all that sage has taught, too.
Now both promote
Jill’s claim to vote,
As every good girl ought to.
— Harper’s, quoted in William T. Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882
— Ralph Barton, Science in Rhyme and Without Reason, 1924, reprinted in Scripta Mathemetica, October 1936
Better Homes
I wish that my room had a floor!
I don’t so much care for a door,
But this crawling around
Without touching the ground
Is getting to be quite a bore!
— Gelett Burgess, The Burgess Nonsense Book, 1901
Here’s to the man who invented stairs
And taught our feet to soar!
He was the first who ever burst
Into a second floor.
The world would be downstairs to-day
Had he not found the key;
So let his name go down to fame,
Whatever it may be.
— Oliver Herford, Happy Days, 1917
Circle Seat
When the Golden Hind was broken up in 1662, its timbers were fashioned into a chair that still resides in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Abraham Cowley wrote an ode, “Sitting and Drinking in the Chair, Made Out of the Reliques of Sir Francis Drake’s Ship”:
As well upon a staff may Witches ride
Their fancy’d Journies in the Ayr,
As I sail round the Ocean in this Chair:
‘Tis true; but yet this Chair which here you see,
For all its quiet now, and gravitie,
Has wandred, and has travailed more,
Than ever Beast, or Fish, or Bird, or ever Tree before.
In every Ayr, and every Sea’t has been,
‘T has compas’d all the Earth, and all the Heavens ‘t has seen.
Let not the Pope’s it self with this compare,
This is the only Universal Chair.
“While armchair travelers dream of going places,” wrote Anne Tyler, “traveling armchairs dream of staying put.”
“A Chronicle”
Once — but no matter when —
There lived — no matter where —
A man whose name — but then
I need not that declare.
He — well, he had been born,
And so he was alive;
His age — I details scorn —
Was somethingty and five.
He lived — how many years
I truly can’t decide;
But this one fact appears
He lived — until he died.
“He died,” I have averred,
But cannot prove ’twas so,
But that he was interred,
At any rate, I know.
I fancy he’d a son,
I hear he had a wife:
Perhaps he’d more than one,
I know not, on my life!
But whether he was rich,
Or whether he was poor,
Or neither — both — or which,
I cannot say, I’m sure.
I can’t recall his name,
Or what he used to do:
But then — well, such is fame!
‘Twill so serve me and you.
And that is why I thus,
About this unknown man
Would fain create a fuss,
To rescue, if I can,
From dark oblivion’s blow,
Some record of his lot:
But, ah! I do not know
Who — where — when — why — or what.
MORAL
In this brief pedigree
A moral we should find —
But what it ought to be
Has quite escaped my mind!
— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880