Changing Subjects
When a man dies
His portraits change.
His eyes look at you
Differently and his lips smile
A different smile. I noticed this
Returning from a poet’s funeral.
Since then I have seen it verified
Often and my theory is true.
– Anna Akhmatova, 1940
The Star Gauge
Chinese poet and palindromist Su Hui lost her husband to a concubine in the fourth century. To console her grief and to lure him back, she composed an ingenious array of 841 characters that can be read forward, backward, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally:
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Each seven-character segment corresponds to a poetic line, and can be read in either direction. At the end of each segment, “you encounter a junction of meridians and can choose which direction to go,” explains anthologist David Hinton. “You can begin anywhere, and the poem ends after four lines have been chosen. This structure generates 2,848 possible poems.”
It’s said that Su Hui’s husband was so moved that he sent away the concubine and rejoined her.
Metabolism
It’s a very odd thing –
As odd as can be –
That whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.;
Porridge and apples,
Mince, muffins and mutton,
Jam, junket, jumbles –
Not a rap, not a button
It matters; the moment
They’re out of her plate,
Though shared by Miss Butcher
And sour Mr. Bate;
Tiny and cheerful,
And neat as can be,
Whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.
– Walter de la Mare
In a Word
impavid
adj. fearless
There was a young fellow named Weir
Who hadn’t an atom of fear;
He indulged a desire
To touch a live wire,
(‘Most any old line will do here!)
– Anonymous, quoted in Carolyn Wells’ Book of American Limericks, 1925
“Owen Kerr vs. Owen Kerr”
From the Western Jurist, November 1878:
Two cousins, each claiming that the other was indebted to him, were in court litigating the matter. During the trial, a member of the bar, possessing a somewhat poetical turn of mind, composed the following lines on the merits of the case:
If the strife in this case is extremely perverse,
‘Tis because ’tis between a couple of ‘Kerrs.’
Each Owen is owin’ — but here lies the bother;
To determine which Owen is owin’ the other.
Each Owen swears Owen to Owen is owin’,
And each alike certain, dog-matic, and knowin’;
But ’tis hoped that the jury will not be deterred
From finding which ‘Kerr’ the true debt has incurred;
Thus settling which Owen by owin’ has failed,
And that justice ‘twixt curs has not been curtailed.
Divine Mystery
A poem on transubstantiation by Luis de León, quoted by Robert Southey in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal:
If this we see be bread, how can it last,
So constantly consum’d, yet always here?
If this be God, then how can it appear
Bread to the eye, and seem bread to the taste?
If bread, why is it worshipp’d by the baker?
If God, can such a space a God comprise?
If bread, how is it, it confounds the wise?
If God, how is it that we eat our Maker?
If bread, what good can such a morsel do?
If God, how is it we divide it so?
If bread, such saving virtue could it give?
If God, how can I see and touch it thus?
If bread, how could it come from heav’n to us?
If God, how can I look at it and live?
Limerick
L is for lovable Lena,
Who met a ferocious hyena;
Whatever occurred
I never have heard;
But anyhow, L is for Lena.
– Anonymous, from Carolyn Wells’ Book of American Limericks, 1925
Inspiration
There once were some learned M.D.’s,
Who captured some germs of disease
And infected a train,
Which, without causing pain,
Allowed one to catch it with ease.
– Oliver Herford
At Sea
Christian Morgenstern’s 1905 nonsense poem “Fish’s Night Song” manages to be both charming and incomprehensible:
That’s it. Jeremy Adler and Ulrich Ernst list the interpretations that have been suggested:
The symbols signify the metre of silent song; the alternation of symbols indicates a fish mouth opening and closing; together, they resemble the frontal view of a choir of fish; they represent water; they resemble the shape of a fish without head or tail. These as well as other interpretations of the poem are quite permissible. Thus we have, in the framework of ‘nonsense literature,’ a new type of visual poetry: a poem of figures that does not imitate any particular form, the abstract figure poem.
“Or, expressed differently,” writes Heinrich Plett in Literary Rhetoric, “the referentiality of this isographemic configuration is polysemous.”
Recension
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh how that glittering taketh me!
– Robert Herrick, 1648
Whenas galoshed my Julia goes,
Unbuckled all from top to toes,
How swift the poem becometh prose!
And when I cast mine eyes and see
Those arctics flopping each way free,
Oh, how that flopping floppeth me!
– Bert Leston Taylor, 1922
Limericks
A globe-trotting man from St. Paul
Made a trip to Japan in the faul.
One thing he found out,
As he rambled about,
Was that Japanese ladies St. Taul.
A censor, whose name was Magee,
Suppressed the whole dictionaree;
When the public said, “No!”
He replied, “It must go!
It has alcohol in it, you see!”
There was a young man from the city,
Who met what he thought was a kitty;
He gave it a pat
And said, “Nice little cat!”
And they buried his clothes out of pity.
– Carolyn Wells’ Book of American Limericks, 1925
The Knee on Its Own
A lone knee wanders through the world,
A knee and nothing more;
It’s not a tent, it’s not a tree,
A knee and nothing more.
In battle once there was a man
Shot foully through and through;
The knee alone remained unhurt
As saints are said to do.
Since then it’s wandered through the world,
A knee and nothing more.
It’s not a tent, it’s not a tree,
A knee and nothing more.
– Christian Morgenstern, 1905
Echoes
“I am willing to give you a show,
But are these all the rôles that you know?”
The manager cried.
And the actor replied,
“Sirrah! No, sir; I know ‘Cyrano’!”
There was a young lady of Butte,
Who thought herself very acute.
That her suitor might praise her,
She gave him a razor,
Which suited her suitor hirsute.
There was a nice fellow named Jenner,
Who sang a phenomenal tenor,
He had little to spend,
So I often would lend
The tenor a ten or a tenner.
‘Tis said, woman loves not her lover
So much as she loves his love of her;
Then loves she her lover
For love of her lover,
Or love of her love of her lover?
– From Carolyn Wells’ Book of American Limericks, 1925.
Gallantry
In 1910 Frances Cornford published “To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train”:
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
In 1933 G.K. Chesterton felt moved to reply:
Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much?
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such?
Last Lesson
Multiplication is mie vexation,
And Division is quite as bad,
The Golden Rule is mie stumbling stule,
And Practice drives me mad.
So wrote an anonymous English student in 1570. Matters had not progressed far in 1809, when 6-year-old Marjorie Fleming wrote in her diary: “I am now going to tell you about the horible and wretched plaege my multiplication gives me you cant concieve it — the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 & 7 times 7 it is what nature itselfe cant endure.”
Alas, the feeling is sometimes shared. After serving four years as a teacher, D.H. Lawrence wrote:
When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?
How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apart
My pack of unruly hounds: I cannot start
Them again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,
I can haul them and urge them no more.
No more can I endure to bear the brunt
Of the books that lie out on the desks: a full three score
Of several insults of blotted pages and scrawl
Of slovenly work that they have offered me.
I am sick, and tired more than any thrall
Upon the woodstacks working weariedly.
And shall I take
The last dear fuel and heap it on my soul
Till I rouse my will like a fire to consume
Their dross of indifference, and burn the scroll
Of their insults in punishment? — I will not!
I will not waste myself to embers for them,
Not all for them shall the fires of my life be hot,
For myself a heap of ashes of weariness, till sleep
Shall have raked the embers clear: I will keep
Some of my strength for myself, for if I should sell
It all for them, I should hate them –
– I will sit and wait for the bell.
Second Thoughts
Behold the mighty Dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his weight and strength
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by these remains
The creature had two sets of brains –
One in his head (the usual place),
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason a priori
As well as a posteriori.
No problem bothered him a bit:
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise he was, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong
It passed a few ideas along;
If something slipped his forward mind
‘Twas rescued by the one behind;
And if in error he was caught
He had a saving afterthought.
As he thought twice before he spoke
He had no judgments to revoke;
For he could think, without congestion,
Upon both sides of every question.
Oh, gaze upon this model beast,
Defunct ten million years at least.
– Bert Leston Taylor, A Line-O’-Verse or Two, 1911
Limericks
There was an old lady of Ryde
Who ate some green apples and died.
The apples, fermented
Inside the lamented,
Made cider inside ‘er inside.
– Anonymous
A gallant young man of Duquesne
Went home with a girl in the ruesne;
She said, with a sigh,
“I wonder when Igh
Shall see such a rain-beau aguesne.”
– Stanton Vaughn, ed., Limerick Lyrics, 1904
There was an old man said, “I fear
That life, my dear friends, is a bubble,
Still, with all due respect to a Philistine ear,
A limerick’s best when it’s double.”
When they said, “But the waste
Of time, temper, taste!”
He gulped down his ink with cantankerous haste,
And chopped off his head with a shubble.
– Walter de la Mare
“Sonnet From the Brooklynese”
My heart is gayly purzed as if it wuy
Ra buyd about to dart in jeryous flight
To you; my darling, may it but alight
On vuygin surl. And may it not incuy
Your anger or disdain. ‘Tis but a fleuy
D’amour, and if you spuyn it you will blight
Its life as if some purzon in the night
Had been instilled into its depths. You stuy
My soul into a tuymurl. If you’ve turyed
With me, I fain would hie me to a clurster,
Wherein my heart would never be annuryed
By thoughts of love. My eyes grow murst and murster
At contemplating such an aching vurd –
O grant me, then, the sang-froid of an urster.
– Margaret Fishback, One to a Customer, 1937
“Double Bluff”
Said Watson to Holmes, “Is it wise –
Such false whiskers when hunting for spies?”
Said the sleuth, “I’m afraid
You’re as dense as Lestrade:
I’m disguised as myself in disguise.”
– R.J.P. Hewison, Punch, Nov. 21, 1951
“Essay to Miss Catharine Jay”
An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T J,
The girl without a ∥,
The belle of U T K.
I 1 der if U got that 1
I wrote 2 U B 4
I sailed in the R K D A,
And sent by L N Moore.
My M T head will scarce contain
A calm I D A bright,
But A T miles from you I must
M{ this chance 2 write.
And first, should N E N V U,
B E Z, mind it not.
Should N E friendship show, be true:
They should not be forgot.
From virt U nev R D V 8;
Her influence B 9
Alike induces 10 dern S,
Or 40 tude D vine.
And if you cannot cut a —
Or cause an !
I hope U’ll put a .
2 1 ?
R U for an X ation 2,
My cous N ? — heart and ☞
He off R’s in a ¶
A § 2 of land.
He says he loves you 2 X S,
U R virtuous and Y’s,
In X L N C U X L
All others in his I’s.
This S A, until U I C,
I pray U 2 X Q’s,
And do not burn in F E G
My young and wayward muse.
Now fare U well, dear K T J,
I trust that U R true–
When this U C, then you can say,
An S A I O U.
– Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890
“Clothes”
In Shakespeare’s plays
Nobody knows
For days and days,
Till the very end,
His closest friend
If he’s changed his clothes.
Prospero has
But to put on his hat
And he’s what he was,
A duke, like that!
They gladly aver,
Who knew him before,
“You are what you were
When you wear what you wore.”
– Henry G. Fischer
“A Llyric of the Llama”
Behold how from her lair the youthful llama
Llopes forth and llightly scans the llandscape o’er.
With llusty heart she llooks upon llife’s drama,
Relying on her llate-llearnt worldly llore.
But llo! Some llad, armed with a yoke infama
Soon llures her into llowly llabor’s cause;
Her wool is llopped to weave into pajama,
And llanguidly she llearns her Gees and Haws.
My children, heed this llesson from all llanguishing young lllamas,
If you would lllive with lllatitude, avoid each llluring lllay;
And do not lllightly lllleave, I beg, your llllonesome, lllloving mammas,
And llllast of allll, don’t spelllll your name in such a silllllly way.
– Burges Johnson, Everybody’s Magazine, August 1907
Recension
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I’m growing old, but add –
Jenny kissed me!
– Leigh Hunt
Jenny kissed me when we met.
She, adorned in silk and satin,
Told me, “That is all you get;
And as you leave, don’t let the cat in.”
Retrospection makes me glad:
Dread disease perhaps thus missed me.
God knows what I might have had
Had Jenny more than merely kissed me.
– Bruce Newling
“Office Mottoes”
Motto heartening, inspiring,
Framed above my pretty desk,
Never Shelley, Keats, or Byring
Penned a phrase so picturesque!
But in me no inspiration
Rides my low and prosy brow –
All I think of is vacation
When I see that lucubration:
When I see another sentence
Framed upon a brother’s wall,
Resolution and repentance
Do not flood o’er me at all
As I read that nugatory
Counsel written years ago,
Only when one comes to borry
Do I heed that ancient story:
Mottoes flat and mottoes silly,
Proverbs void of point or wit,
“KEEP A-PLUGGIN’ WHEN IT’S HILLY!”
“LIFE’S A TIGER: CONQUER IT!”
Office mottoes make me weary
And of all the bromide bunch
There is only one I seri-
Ously like, and that’s the cheery:
– Franklin Pierce Adams, Tobogganning on Parnassus, 1913
