“The Sweet Singer of Michigan”

Julia Moore’s poetry was so bad that it gained a national following even among her contemporaries in the 1870s. One reviewer wrote, “Shakespeare, could he read it, would be glad that he was dead”:

They once did live at Edgerton,
They once did live at Muskegon,
From there they went to Chicago,
Which proved their fatal overthrow.

It was William House’s family,
As fine a family as you see—
His family was eleven in all,
I do not think it was very small.

She stopped writing when she saw that her fans were laughing, not weeping — and, immortally, she closed her career with these lines:

And now kind friends, what I have wrote
I hope you will pass o’er,
And not criticise as some have done
Hitherto herebefore.

| Literature · Poems

“My Poker Girl”

Her eyes are velvet, soft and fine,
That none can antedate;
Her hair’s fine strands seem all divine,
Her form is, oh! so

http://books.google.com/books?id=07A-AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA41&dq=%22and+when+she+wills+to+blush%22&as_brr=1&ei=6lgrSar4H4XCywSqkvnBBQ

Her teeth, like driven snow, are white;
And when she wills to blush
There is no tint can equal quite
Her rounded cheek’s fine

http://books.google.com/books?id=07A-AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA41&dq=%22and+when+she+wills+to+blush%22&as_brr=1&ei=6lgrSar4H4XCywSqkvnBBQ

Could I but hold a hand like that
Just once, I would not care
If afterwards I stood quite pat
Forever, on a

http://books.google.com/books?id=07A-AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA41&dq=%22and+when+she+wills+to+blush%22&as_brr=1&ei=6lgrSar4H4XCywSqkvnBBQ

— Thomas Lansing Masson

| Poems

“Lides to Bary Jade”

http://books.google.com/books?id=AboOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA25&dq=%22beddy+biles%22&as_brr=1&ei=jpgtSb-HGpK6M_uU-LsE&rview=1#PPA23,M1

The bood is beabig brighdly, love;
The sdars are shidig too;
While I ab gazing dreabily,
Add thigkig, love, of you.
You caddot, oh! you caddot kdow,
By darlig, how I biss you–
(Oh, whadt a fearful cold I’ve got! —
Ck-tish-u! Ck-ck-tish-u!)

I’b sittig id the arbor, love,
Where you sat by by side,
Whed od that calb, autubdal dight
You said you’d be by bride.
Oh! for wud bobedt to caress
Add tederly to kiss you;
Budt do! we’re beddy biles apart–
(Ho-rash-o! Ck-ck-tish-u!)

This charbig evedig brigs to bide
The tibe whed first we bet:
It seebs budt odly yesterday;
I thigk I see you yet.
Oh! tell be, ab I sdill your owd?
By hopes — oh, do dot dash theb!
(Codfoud by cold, ’tis gettig worse–
Ck-tish-u! Ck-ck-thrash-eb!)

Good-by, by darlig Bary Jade!
The bid-dight hour is dear;
Add it is hardly wise, by love,
For be to ligger here.
The heavy dews are fallig fast:
A fod good-dight I wish you.
(Ho-rash-o! — there it is agaid —
Ck-thrash-ub! Ck-ck-tish-u!)

— Charles Follen Adams

| Poems

The Two Cultures

Tennyson’s poem “The Vision of Sin” contains this couplet:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

When he published it in 1842, Charles Babbage sent him a note:

I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world’s population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows:–

Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.

“I may add that the exact figures are 1.167,” he added, “but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.”

| Literature · Poems · Science & Math

“Dirge”

“To the memory of Miss Ellen Gee, of Kew, who died in consequence of being stung in the eye by a bee.”

Peerless, yet hapless, maid of Q!
Accomplish’d LN G!
Never again shall I and U
Together sip our T.

For, ah! the Fates! I know not Y,
Sent ‘midst the flowers a B,
Which ven’mous stung her in the I,
So that she could not C.

LN exclaim’d, “Vile spiteful B!
If ever I catch U
On jess’mine, rosebud, or sweet P,
I’ll change your stinging Q.”

“I’ll send you, like a lamb or U,
Across th’ Atlantic C,
From our delightful village Q,
To distant OYE.”

A stream runs from my wounded I,
Salt as the briny C,
As rapid as the X or Y,
The OIO, or D.”

Then fare thee ill, insensate B!
Which stung, nor yet knew Y;
Since not for wealthy Durham’s C
Would I have lost my I.”

They bear with tears fair LN G
In funeral RA,
A clay-cold corpse now doom’d to B,
Whilst I mourn her DK.

Ye nymphs of Q, then shun each B,
List to the reason Y!
For should A B C U at T,
He’ll surely sting your I.

Now in a grave L deep in Q,
She’s cold as cold can B;
Whilst robins sing upon A U
Her dirge and LEG.

— New Monthly Magazine, reprinted in A Collection of Newspaper Extracts, 1842

| Language · Poems

O I C

I’m in a 10der mood to-day
& feel poetic, 2;
4 fun I’ll just — off a line
& send it off 2 U.

I’m sorry you’ve been 6 O long;
Don’t B disconsol8;
But bear your ills with 42de,
& they won’t seem so gr8.

— Anonymous

| Language · Poems

Rhyming the Unrhymable

I have tried a hundred times, I guess,
To find a rhyme for month;
I have failed a hundred times, I know,
But succeeded the hundred and one-th.

There were two men a training went.
It was in December month;
One had his bayonet thrown away,
The other had his gun th-
rown away.

— Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, August 1894

| Language · Poems

High-Flown

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Starry_Night_Over_the_Rhone.jpg

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” “revised by a committee of eminent preceptors and scholars”:

Shine with irregular, intermitted light, sparkle at intervals, diminutive, luminous, heavenly body.
How I conjecture, with surprise, not unmixed with uncertainty, what you are,
Located, apparently, at such a remote distance from, and at a height so vastly superior to this earth, the planet we inhabit,
Similar in general appearance and refractory powers to the precious primitive octahedron crystal of pure carbon, set in the aerial region surrounding the earth.

— William T. Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882

| Language · Poems

“Epigram”

A player at blind-man’s-buff, and Sympathy,
In common, have one striking feature:
Each is, you see,
A fellow feeling for a fellow creature.

— John Augustus Miles, Poems and Chess Problems, 1882

| Poems