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July 23, 2007

Famous poems as limericks

Oh, god, this is delicious. (From BoingBoing) I’d sense another contest coming on, if we’d had more than 10 responses to the last one….

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44 comments on “Famous poems as limericks”

  1. Paul says:

    Okay, I’ll bite:

    The Lady of Shalott sat weaving,
    locked in a tower, and grieving,
    but when she saw Lancelot,
    she took a rowboat to Camelot,
    where they found her adrift and not breathing.

  2. Chris says:

    Did someone say bite?

    A man named J.R. tries to teach
    that all of the things out of reach
    remain so every day
    but to him I would say
    Dude, it’s just a fucking peach.

  3. George says:

    Nice, Paul! How about a little Auden?

    The poet said, Stop all the clocks,
    my love has been dashed on the rocks.
    My sense of direction
    is short of perfection,
    and everything now sucks bollocks.

  4. Paul says:

    A challenge? Here’s Stephen Crane’s “In the Desert” for now.

    I saw a creature squat in the sand.
    He held his own heart in its hand.
    Even though it was bitter,
    he ate it, that critter!
    But could supply keep up with demand?”

  5. Paul says:

    Okay George, here’s my answer to your Auden challenge.

    “Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

    The Old Masters knew something of pain.
    They thought it was common and plain.
    When Icarus fell
    with a splash and a yell,
    no one noticed, or cared, or complained.

  6. Mike says:

    Best. Idea. Ever.
    George and Paul, hillarious.

    How about a little Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror?

    There once was a painter from Rome
    Who did his self-portrait at home.
    I used its perspective
    To get introspective.
    And now, I present this here tome.

  7. George says:

    Oh, it’s on, bitch:

    There once was a man name Yeats,
    who said, Lo! the world disintegrates!
    Lord, we’re in for a ride
    on that blood-dimmed tide
    with a beast that can`t walk very straight.

  8. George says:

    Okay, I am getting ready to take off for Toronto, but I urge you all to continue shirking your responsibilities and posting limericks based on poems. Here’s my last for a few days. Unless I find a free wireless connection somewheres…

    The Day Lady Died

    Frank ambled about on his lunch
    and name-dropped his friends a whole bunch.
    He rambled, and joked,
    bought booze and some smokes,
    then her death knocked him down like a punch.

  9. Doctor Slack says:

    Shelley’s Death the Leveller:

    Noted Death: “The best part of our State
    Is its populist pressure on Fate.
    Every one of you chumps
    After taking your lumps
    Will be equally tasty wormbait.”

  10. Doctor Slack says:

    And here’s a run at Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

    My friend Alfred and I took a wander
    Through the half-empy streets, just to ponder
    If, at teatime with biscuits,
    One should break the meniscus
    Of a buttoned-down life that feels squandered.

  11. Susan says:

    A traveller in lands antique
    dug in the sand for a week
    when he came up for air
    he was filled with despair—
    “This writing’s Egyptian, not Greek!”

    not exactly Ozymandias!

  12. George says:

    Come on, people! I’m surprised more of you aren’t getting in on this. Surely you’re just plotting your debut?

    Keats said his great Grecian Urn
    was a symbol for beauty’s return,
    but was this amphora
    a great metaphor or
    just a capably negative turn?

  13. Susan says:

    There once was a Mariner old
    who wanted his damn story told
    so he fixed passersby
    with his glittering eye
    and bored them to death in the cold.

  14. Matt says:

    Crying of Lot 49

    There was a girl named Oedipa Maas
    Whose ex was a bit of an ass
    He played a trick with the mail
    ‘Twas a bit beyond the pale
    but won a spot in every grad class

    Yes, I’m sorry, the last line is a cop out.

  15. Alyssa says:

    There once was a Khan of Xanadu
    Whose pleasure-dome caused quite a to-do
    It was awfully pretty
    Which is why it’s a pity
    I forgot the rest–what can you do?

  16. Andrew says:

    THIS IS JUST TO SAY

    There once was a doctor named Williams
    Who found his wife’s plums where she’d chilled ‘em.
    He left her a note
    So cute (so he hoped)
    That she wouldn’t immediately kill him.

  17. Chris says:

    A little Lowell, maybe?

    The Quakers who lived in Nantucket….

  18. Carl Zoilus says:

    These are fantastic – especially your own, George. I’ve carried on the game, switching the genre from poems-as-limericks to songs-as-limericks, over on my site:

    [See link above]

  19. George says:

    Images made him feel strengthy
    and kept poems from being lengthy:
    “faces in a crowd”
    “on a wet black bough”
    a sort of poetic fengshui.

  20. Matt says:

    If I were a cinnamon peeler
    and of your heart a right stealer
    no washing of smell
    could make my presence go well
    if I with another girl were to feel her.

  21. Paul says:

    Here’s some Robert Lowell.

    Skunk Hour

    The last of Maine’s gentry are sunk,
    and the new generation’s turned punk.
    It leaves me so bored
    I cruise around in my Ford,
    but all that I find is a skunk.

  22. George says:

    I think I’m running out of steam here. I’ll try one more then cast them to the fates:

    Virgil and Dante stroll
    through Hell, though Heaven’s their goal
    (Heavens to Murgatroyd
    don’t forget Purgatroyd)
    divine perhaps, but not droll.

    This is what passes for funny these days? Oy.

  23. Matt says:

    Paradise Lost?

    God got his robes in a knot
    when Eve didn’t do what she ought
    so God kicked her and Adam out
    and they wandered about
    and did some Bible-ish rot.

  24. Paul says:

    I CAN’T STOP!

    This Be the Limerick
    (after Philip Larkin)

    They fuck you up, your parents do,
    and though it’s not that good for you,
    it’s just a fucked inheritance
    they got, in turn, from their parents.
    So don’t have kids, they’ll get fucked, too.

  25. Jennica says:

    The art that she’d mastered was “losing”,
    though for some her irony’s confusing.
    Look: she doesn’t miss her keys,
    just her main squeeze—
    you can tell by the ( ) that she’s using!

  26. Pat says:

    At a fork in the road, fifty lira,
    I thought I would take, que sera,
    Until swift second thought
    Left me sweaty and fraught,
    Oh, what should I do Yogi Berra?

  27. Chris says:

    There once was a man named Ulysses
    Beside whom most others were sissies.
    He tried to be bold
    even when he was old
    and needed a cart for his testes.

  28. Chris says:

    …I’m mildly disturbed by the standard leader that has me “saying” Ulysses needed a cart for his testes.

  29. Scott says:

    I.
    Young Beowulf, thirsty for mead,
    Saw that Hrothgar and friends were in need.
        And eschewing his sword
        (Or his hunky word-hoard)
    He made Grendel explosively bleed.

    II.
    Then Gren’s mother got somewhat annoyed,
    And a high-ranking Dane she destroyed.
        So the ‘Wulf, post-deep-breath,
        Promptly drilled her to death
    With a big-ass blade straight out of Freud.

    III.
    Years later, old B. hit the deck
    When some dragon chomped down on his neck.
        As he died, he cried “Crap!
        “What the fuck is ‘mocap’?
    “I’m being butchered by Robert Zemeck!”

  30. Susan says:

    Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    went chortling through tulgey groves
    “The Jabberwock’s dead!
    Beamish off his head!”
    So what? said the borogoves.

  31. Roland says:

    Virgil took Dante from Florence
    on a tour of all Hell’s abhorrence
    It was not good to be dead!
    Ugolino gnawed the Archbishop’s head!
    Over flatterers shit ran in torrents!

  32. Susan says:

    urk, That was supposed to read:

    Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
    went chortling through tulgey groves
    “The Jabberwock’s dead!
    Beamish cut off his head!”
    “So what?” said the borogoves.

  33. George says:

    Let’s keep this rolling people……

    I stood at the fork with my biro,
    my chances for both roads a zero,
    with a world-weary sigh
    took the less travelled by,
    and thought myself quite the damn hero.

  34. Chris says:

    At night near the beach down in Dover
    I got maudlin and sad looking over
    the rough white capped seas
    toward France and Greece
    to the point of boring my lover.

    [more Hecht's take on Arnold than Arnold...]

  35. Jamie Bell says:

    Love this !Here are some more:
    wcw:
    There’s providence in the fall of a sparrow,
    But our lives are so full and so narrow,
    That I tug on your sleeve,
    And ask you to perceive,
    The zen of a wet red wheelbarrow.

    Spencer(Amoretti 75):
    When the sea erased what I had written—
    Her name,with whom I was smitten—
    She upraided my vanity,
    But I vowed my sanity,
    By all the anthologies in Britain.

    Cohen:
    Suzanne took me down to the river,
    And you need not pretend to forgive her,
    She did not criticize me,
    She loved and baptized me,
    And with love I continue to live her.

    Frostbite:
    Falling snow so held my attention,
    That I flouted all social covention.
    My resulting reflection,
    And deep introspection,
    Led to nifty poetic invention.

  36. Maureen says:

    I managed to come up with 3:
    “THE RAVEN”
    The raven he sat ‘bove my door
    And he quoth with a squawk “nevermore”
    And he quoth and he quoth
    Till I let out an oath
    And I kicked that damned crow on the floor

    “DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT”
    Don’t go gentle Dyl said and he’s right
    Don’t give up and don’t follow the light
    Go down kicking and screaming
    With language that’s steaming
    ‘Cause you’re dead if you give up the fight

    “UNDERWEAR”
    I couldn’t sleep thinking ’bout shorts
    Boxer briefs, thongs and most other sorts
    clean and white or dung spotted
    even bunched up and knotted
    and of all of the bums they supports

  37. Matt says:

    Brecht’s Bucherverbrennung:

    As Nazis sat burning some books in a heap
    an ‘edgy’ (read: faux-lit) author had to leap
    when he noticed that they had all his books ignored
    and so he stood up to those Nazis and roared
    “What does it take to get censored, you creeps?”

  38. George says:

    465

    I heard a fly buzz from my cot
    and knew that my birth this was not -
    so I signed it away -
    what I’d had in my day -
    a king’s ransom I’d trade for a swot.

    Come on, one more each.

  39. Susan says:

    Larkin sat on a train and was grim
    because no one was marrying him
    no girls in loud dresses
    would offer caresses
    to someone so scornful and dim.

  40. Scott says:

    Shakespeare, Sonnet 18:

    To a summer’s day thee I’d compare.
    But your figure won’t always be fair.
        Though you’ll age, die, and rot,
        You’ll forever stay HOTT
    Through my pent-up iambic hot air.

  41. Jamie says:

    The Tyger is bright with the fire
    Malevolence tinged with desire
    “Is the source of the flame
    and meekness the same?”
    So the poet is moved to enquire

  42. Jamie says:

    In green fields for his own name’s sake,
    Was the poet lying to make
    Such an issue in print
    About lamb without mint
    Or perhaps he was just being Blake?

  43. Jamie Bell says:

    Ok, One last more. . .
    There’s my last duchess, looking quite pert,
    She turned heads and I thought her a flirt,
    So I silenced the bitch.
    Now, my new love is rich,
    And you can see she’s a nice bit of skirt.

  44. Jamie Bell says:

    Don’t open that door—use the Service entrance:
    I delivered my American chum,
    To the Lac Lebarge crematorium.
    But when I checked on the flame,
    He arorse to exclaim,
    “I’m avoiding the draft, don’t be glum!”

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