Search Results for: limerick
Limerick
A performative poet of Hibernia
Rhymed himself into a hernia.
He became quite adept
At this practice, except
For the occasional non-sequitur.
— Tom Stoppard
Limerick
“Garçon!” the diner was chargin’,
“My butter has been writ large in!”
“But I had to write there,”
Exclaimed waiter Pierre,
“I didn’t have room in the margarine.”
(Thanks, Larry.)
Limericks
There was a brave girl of Connecticut
Who signaled the train with her pecticut,
Which the papers defined
As presence of mind
But deplorable absence of ecticut.
— Ogden Nash
Said a pupil of Einstein: “It’s rotten
To find I’d completely forgotten
That by living so fast
All my future’s my past,
And I’m buried before I’m begotten.”
— C.F. Best
A maiden at college called Breeze,
Weighed down by B.A.s and Litt.D.s,
Collapsed from the strain
Alas! It was plain
She was killing herself by degrees.
— Mrs. Warren
12/05/2023 UPDATE: Reader E. Norfolk-Ingway sent this — the author is unknown:
There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.
Limerick
There was a young fellow of Trinity
Who found
The number of digits
Gave him the fidgets
So he dropped math and took up divinity.
Limerick
A Maths Master, teaching at Rye,
Bought his pupils a succulent π.
But we’re sorry to state
That 3/8
With 6=7 knows why.
— Punch, Sept. 29, 1937, via William R. Ransom, One Hundred Mathematical Curiosities, 1953
(I read this as “three overate, with sick sequels, heaven knows why.”)
Literary Limericks
Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed?
Was Gertrude incestuously wed?
Is there anything certain?
By the fall of the curtain
Almost everyone’s certainly dead.
— A. Cinna
Once a raven on Pluto’s dark shore
Brought the singular news: “Nevermore.”
‘Twas of useless avail
To ask further detail,
His reply was the same as before.
— Anthony Euwer
There once was a fellow called Hyde,
Whose twin self he couldn’t abide;
But Jekyll, the Devil,
Dragged Hyde to his level,
“Inside job,” cried Hyde, as he died.
— E.J. Jackson
When Ireland was bloody and leaderless,
The tedious, garrulous Daedalus —
Having failed both as priest
And as Glorious Beast —
Sailed away to write books that were readerless.
— Gina Berkeley
Philosophical Limericks
Cried the maid: “You must marry me, Hume!”
A statement that made David fume.
He said: “In cause and effect,
There is a defect;
That it’s mine you can only assume.”
— P.W.R. Foot
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury thought
Life was nasty and brutish and short;
But contracts, once made,
Would come to our aid,
And ensure modest comfort — at court.
— Peter Alexander
There was a young man who said: “Ayer
Has answered the atheist’s prayer,
For a Hell one can’t verify
Surely can’t terrify —
At least till you know you are there.”
— Anonymous
Unrhymed Limericks
There was an old fellow called Hugger,
Who was captain and mate of a fishing smack;
When a yacht crossed his bows,
He said: “My word!
It’s an awfully good thing it wasn’t a liner.”
— Arnold Hyde
An American girl in Versailles
Said: “I feel so ashamed I could weep.
Ten days I’ve been here
And not gone to the Louvre.”
“Never mind,” said someone, “it’s possibly only the hard water.”
— Quoted in Anthony Burgess’ But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?
There was a young lady of Ealing
Who walked up and down on the window;
And there, for a while,
To vary her technique,
She practiced strathspeying and hornpipes.
— Allen M. Laing
There was a young lady called Dawes,
Went out to a dance without gloves;
Her ma said: “Amelia!
Should anyone dance with you,
He’ll take you for one of them actresses.”
— Anonymous
A British Limerick
A young man called Cholmondeley Colquhoun
Kept as a pet a babolquhoun.
His mother said, “Cholmondeley,
Do you think it quite colmondeley
To feed your babolquhoun with a spolquhoun?”
(Via Willard R. Espy.)