Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –
What made you so awfully clever?’
‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’
Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!’
LEWIS CARROLL
THE SEA SERPANT
An Accurate Description
A-sleepin’ at length on the sand,
Where the beach was all tidy and clean,
A-strokin’ his scale with the brush on his tail
The wily Sea Serpant I seen.
And what was his colour? you asks,
And how did he look? inquires you,
I’ll be busted and blessed if he didn’t look jest
Like you would of expected ’im to!
His head was the size of a – well,
The size what they always attains;
He whistled a tune what was built like a prune,
And his tail was the shape o’ his brains.
His scales they was ruther – you know –
Like the leaves what you pick off o’ eggs;
And the way o’ his walk – well, it’s useless to talk,
Fer o’ course you’ve seen Sea Serpants’ legs.
His length it was seventeen miles,
Or fathoms, or inches, or feet
(Me memory’s sich that I can’t recall which,
Though at figgers I’ve seldome been beat).
And I says as I looks at the beast,
‘He reminds me o’ somethin’ I’ve seen –
Is it candy or cats or humans or hats,
Or Fenimore Cooper I mean?’
And as I debated the point,
In a way that I can’t understand,
The Sea Serpant he disappeared in the sea
And walked through the ocean by land.
And somehow I knowed he’d come back,
So I marked off the place with me cap;
’Twas Latitude West and Longitude North
And forty-eight cents by the map.
And his length it was seventeen miles,
Or inches, or fathoms, or feet
(Me memory’s sich that I can’t recall which,
Though at figgers I’ve seldom been beat).
WALLACE IRWIN
THERE WAS AN OLD MAN IN A TRUNK
There was an old man in a trunk,
Who inquired of his wife, ‘Am I drunk?’
She replied with regret,
‘I’m afraid so, my pet.’
And he answered, ‘It’s just as I thunk.’
OGDEN NASH
THE WHITE KNIGHT’S BALLAD
I’ll tell thee everything I can;
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
‘Who are you, aged man?’ I said.
‘And how is it you live?’
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said ‘I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,’ he said,
‘Who sail on stormy seas;
And that’s the way I get my bread –
A trifle, if you please.’
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried ‘Come, tell me how you live!’
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said ‘I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland’s Macassar Oil –
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.’
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
‘Come, tell me how you live,’ I cried
‘And what it is you do!’
He said ‘I hunt for haddocks’ eyes
Among the heather bright,
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
‘I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of hansom-cabs.
And that’s the way’ (he gave a wink)
‘By which I get my wealth –
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour’s noble health.’
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth.
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e’er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know –
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo –
That summer evening long ago
A-sitting on a gate.
LEWIS CARROLL
PLANTING A MAILBOX
Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst
And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin
His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.
This moment come, begin.
The site should be within an easy walk,
Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength
Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk
Should show three feet of length.
Don’t harrow, weed, or water; just apply
A little gravel. Sun, and motor fumes
Perform the miracle; in late July,
A young post office blooms.
JOHN UPDIKE
I WISH I WERE A JELLY FISH
TRIOLET
I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn’t any cares,
And doesn’t even have to wish
‘I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.’
G. K. CHESTERTON
POEMS OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION
(No. 1)
Goldfish
are not
boldfish
They cry
when they
fall over
They tittletat
and chew
the fat
And are glad
when it’s
all over.
ROGER MCGOUGH
&nbs
p; THE SWORD-FISH
The Sword-fish is an awful brute,
He tears your hair out by the root.
And when you’re bathing in the sea,
He leaps upon you suddenly.
And if you get out on the sand,
He sometimes follows you inland.
LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS
THE COD
There’s something very strange and odd
About the habits of the Cod.
For when you’re swimming in the sea,
He sometimes bites you on the knee.
And though his bites are not past healing,
It is a most unpleasant feeling.
And when you’re diving down below,
He often nips you on the toe.
And though he doesn’t hurt you much,
He has a disagreeable touch.
There’s one thing to be said for him, –
It is a treat to see him swim.
But though he swims in graceful curves,
He rather gets upon your nerves.
LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS
AFTERNOON OF A PRAWN
I don’t mind dawn.
Night comes and goes.
It’s afternoon
Gets up my nose.
I wish I’d not
Been born a prawn.
I’d sooner be
A unicorn
Complete with horn,
But no such luck.
Wouldn’t have minded
Being a duck –
At least I’d quack –
But all around
The salty seas
Prawns make no sound,
But a thin whistle,
A tedious song,
And afternoons
Grow far too long.
Nothing to do
With your see-through shell.
Afternoons
For prawns are hell.
I don’t mind dawn.
Night comes and goes.
It’s afternoons
Get up my nose.
KIT WRIGHT
IT MAKES A CHANGE
There’s nothing makes a Greenland whale
Feel half so high and mighty
As sitting on a mantelpiece
In Aunty Mabel’s nighty.
It makes a change from Freezing Seas,
(Of which a whale can tire),
To warm his weary tail at ease
Before an English fire.
For this delight he leaves the seas
(Unknown to Aunty Mabel),
Returning only when the dawn
Lights up the Breakfast Table.
MERVYN PEAKE
STICKY ENDS
THE BABE
The babe, with a cry brief and dismal,
Fell into the water baptismal:
E’re they’d gathered its plight,
It had sunk out of sight,
For the depth of the font was abysmal.
EDWARD GOREY
LITTLE WILLIE’S DEAD
Little Willie’s dead,
Jam him in the coffin,
For you don’t get the chance
Of a funeral of en.
ANONYMOUS
THE LION
Oh, weep for Mr and Mrs Bryan!
He was eaten by a lion;
Following which, the lion’s lioness
Up and swallowed Bryan’s Bryaness.
OGDEN NASH
WASTE
I had written to Aunt Maud,
Who was on a trip abroad,
When I heard she’d died of cramp
Just too late to save the stamp.
HARRY GRAHAM
IDYLL
I knew a child called Alma Brent,
Completely destitute of brains,
Whose principal accomplishment
Was imitating railway trains.
When ladies called at ‘Sunnyside’,
Mama, to keep the party clean,
Would say, with pardonable pride,
‘Now, Alma, do the six-fifteen.’
The child would grunt and snort and puff,
With weird contortions of the face,
And when the guests had had enough,
She’d cease, with one last wild grimace.
One day her jovial Uncle Paul
Cried, ‘Come on, Alma! Do your worst!’
And, challenged thus before them all,
She did the four-nineteen – and burst.
J. B. MORTON
SALLY SIMPKIN’S LAMENT OR, JOHN JONES’S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE
‘Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.
‘It is not painted to the life,
For where’s the trowsers blue?
Oh Jones, my dear! – Oh dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?’
‘Oh! Sally dear, it is too true, –
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!
‘Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I’ve been bit in two.
‘You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass – for now to you
I’m neither here nor there.
‘Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me!
‘Don’t fear my ghost will walk ’o nights
To haunt as people say;
My ghost can’t walk, for, oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!
‘Lord! think when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a half,
Without ‘a quarter’s notice’.
‘One half is here, the other half
Is near Columbia placed;
Oh! Sally, I have got the whole
Atlantic for my waist.
‘But now, adieu – a long adieu!
I’ve solved death’s awful riddle,
And would say more, but I am doomed
To break off in the middle.’
THOMAS HOOD
ON THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN OFFICER OF THE SALVATION ARMY
‘Hallelujah!’ was the only observation
That escaped Lieutenant-Colonel Mary Jane,
When she tumbled off the platform in the station,
And was cut in little pieces by the train.
Mary Jane, the train is through yer:
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
We will gather up the fragments that remain.
A. E. HOUSMAN
KITTY
Isn’t it a
Dreadful pity
What became of
Dreamy Kitty,
Noticing the
Moon above her,
Not
the
missing
man-hole
cover?
COLIN WEST
DISTRACTING CREATURES
SAID THE MONKEY TO THE DONKEY
Said the monkey to the donkey,
‘What’ll you have to drink?’
Said the donkey to the monkey,
‘I’d like a swig of ink.’
ANONYMOUS
A CAT CAME DANCING OUT OF A BARN
A cat came dancing out of a barn
With a pair of bag-pipes under her arm;
She could sing nothing but, Fiddle cum fee,
The mouse has married the bumble-bee.
Pipe, cat; dance, mouse;
We’ll have a wedding at our good house.
NURSERY RHYME
THE COMIC ADVENTURES OF OLD MOTHER HUBBARD AND HER DOG
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupb
oard,
To fetch her poor dog a bone;
But when she came there
The cupboard was bare
And so the poor dog had none.
She went to the baker’s
To buy him some bread;
But when she came back
The poor dog was dead.
She went to the undertaker’s
To buy him a coffin;