sweasel.com

A Limerick is NOT poetry. 😉

There was a young man from Nantucket…

I always liked Tennyson, BTW.

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I likes me some of the works of Ol’ Rudy the K. I think the Gods of the Copybook Headings are due to drop by any day now.
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/gods.html

These lines from Yeats keep coming to my mind:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

There once was a man from Tralee.
Who was stung on the neck by a wasp.
When asked if it hurt.
He said not a bit.
He can do it again if he wants.

How about some original poetry?

“One should never use flammable lotions
To lubricate sexual motions
Lest the heat of the stroke
Produce flames and smoke
Or even, God help us, explosions!”

It’s original, because I wrote it.

Oh my, you really shouldn’a started up the Limerick thing…

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

But then:

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

And finally:

Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,
Where he still held the cash as an asset,
But Nan and the man
Stole the money and ran,
And as for the bucket, Manhasset.

For more ribald fun:
http://www.angelfire.com/on/BikerBob/adult.html

When I was about six, on long car trips (of which we had an improbably number, we used to take turns writing one line of a limerick each. The only one I remember was:

There was a young lady of Yale
Who need to pee in a pail.
And when she was done
She started to run
And slipped in the pee on her tail.

A sophisticated people, us.

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher/
called the hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
laid an egg in his hat.
And thus, did the hen re-ward beecher.
.
Ogden Nash was my favorite poet back in the early times. We had two of his books, IIRC when I was a youngun.

The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks
which practically conceal its sex.
I think it quite clever of the turtle,
in such a fix to be so fertile.

Ah, the good old G rated days of yesteryear. It was many years later that I started learning the real beauty of poetry:

Jack and Jill went up a hill.
Each one had a quarter.
Jill came down with fifty cents.
And Jack got more than water.

As I approach retirement, Tennyson’s lines about sailing beyond the sunset sound better and better. The sad part is that Yeats was absolutely right about the center not holding.

At least we still have limericks. Here’s an oldie (it helps to know that the American Austin Car Company was a maker of very small cars from the early 30s):

There once was a man from Boston,
Who bought himself a new Austin.
There was room for his ass and a gallon of gas,
But the rest hung out and he lost ’em.

I loved Ogden Nash when I were a lass, Mike. Though my mother had to explain to me why “in the world of mules, there are no rules.”

(In case your mom isn’t around, it’s because mules are sterile).

(I remind you I lived in Pawtucket for seven years)

I got borned there. It’s in me blood, it is!

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

That one only works if you don’t know how far it is from Woonsocket.

LOve your stuff! I think i got this from I. Asimov…
Said Einstein,”I have an equation!
That science Might Call Rabelaisian,
Let “P” be virginity, aproaching infinity, and “U” be a Constant (Persuasion)
if P/U is inverted, and the Square root of U is inserted
X times into P the Result, QED,
is a Relative.” Einstein asserted!