It’s still April, National Poetry Month, so I am compelled by the forces of nature and nature’s stewards, your neighborhood climatologists, to post a substantive poem for your cultural enrichment. What better choice could I make than an Edward Lear limerick.
There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he’d eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.
But wait! If you act now, you can get two limericks for the price of one.
There was a Young Lady whose eyes,
Were unique as to colour and size;
When she opened them wide,
People all turned aside,
And started away in surprise.
I take it the second one is not from Lear, since he had the (very irritating) habit of repeating the the last word of the first line at the end of the final line. This makes limericks much easier to compose, but not very amusing.
Is the second one yours? If so, well done.
Yes, I looked at many from Lear with the first and last line almost the same. I’m with you on the weakness of them, but according to the site I from which pulled these, both are from Lear.
Here’s a good one written in 1999.
Very good.
My daughter pointed me to some limericks in old books we have. Shocking this stuff isn’t online. Aren’t the Interwebs the last frontier of information?
There was a young man so benighted
He never knew when he was slighted;
He could go to a party
And eat just as hearty
As if he’d been really invited.
A canner, exceedingly canny,
One morning remarked to his granny,
“A canner can can
Anything that he can,
But a canner can’t can a can, can he?”