Lightening Up With Limericks--Parental Discretion Advised--National P{oetry Month 2026

 

We’ve been doing some heavy lifting the past few days in the annual National Poetry Month series—grim history, heavy current events, serious religion, and a doleful look at the planet’s future.  Time to lighten things up! and what could be lighter than limericks?  Like Japanese haiku, limericks are very short form poems with a strict form.  Unlike haiku they are not ethereal, spiritual, or calming.  On the contrary they are bawdy—often lewd—disrespectful, rude, and sassy.  Even “clean” limericks for children are often rowdy, rebellious, and mischievous.

A limerick must consist of five lines. The first, second, and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables while rhyming and having the same verbal rhythm. The third and fourth lines only have to have five to seven syllables and have to rhyme with each other and have the same rhythm.  That’s an a-a-b-b-a rhyme scheme for those of you keeping score at home.

The form appeared in England in the early 18th Century and was popularized by Edward Lear, an artist, illustrator, musician, author, and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense in the 19th Century.  As a form of folk verse its origins may be much older. Gershon Legman compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene to which literary heavy weights Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw concurred. Lear described the clean limerick as a “periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity.”

The connection between the limerick and the Irish County of the same name are satisfactorily obscure but may derive from an earlier form of a nonsense verse parlor game that traditionally included a refrain that included “Will [or won’t] you come (up) to Limerick?”  But perhaps it was simply because a little Old Sod poteen, loosened the tongue and inhibitions for ribald play.

The most famous limerick of all was considered so obscene that it seldom saw print, although it was recited in many a bar room.

There was a young man from Nantucket

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

    He said with a grin

    As he wiped off his chin,

“If my ear was a cunt I would fuck it.

 

                                      

                                              Edward Lear, 1866.

Despite his opinion, that limericks were generally obscene, the ones Edward Lear wrote and published in his 1875 Book of Nonsense did not offend Victorian morality.  But these two seem to include a sly s.

There was an Old Man who said, “Hush!

I perceive a young bird in this bush!

When they said, “Is it small?”

He replied, “Not at all!

It is four times as big as the bush!”

 

—Edward Lear

 

There was a Young Lady of Dorking,

Who bought a large bonnet for walking;

But its colour and size,

So bedazzled her eyes,

That she very soon went back to Dorking.

 

—Edward Lear

One from America’s comic poet.

Here is a more modern example of the old fashion filthy absolutely guaranteed to offend.

The lass I brought home was a prize,

With an alluring set of bright eyes,

Her breasts, so well kept,

Were what I’d expect,

But her penis was quite a surprise!

Limericks are frequently used as political satire—usually scurrilous and—you should pardon the expression—below the belt employed by partisans of the Right and the Left with equal zest.

The President’s loud protestation

On his fall to his intern’s temptation:

“This affair is still moral

As long as it’s oral

Straight screwing I save for the nation.

 

 

A president famed for his spite*

Tweeted “I am outstandingly bright.

I’d be perfectly able

To muck out any stable

Because I am a genius at shite!

 

―Jim McLeod

 

Note: The limerick above won the fifth annual Bring your Limericks to Limerick contest, sponsored by the Limerick Writers’ Centre. We found the name of the winning limerick writer ironic, since Trump’s mother was a MacLeod from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides!

 

Dear Donald, when out on the stump

Please don’t lunge at our flag and then hump.

Such an act’s unbecoming

And vulgar — mind-numbing.

What’s your next flag-act? Taking a dump?

 

You get the idea.  Your efforts welcome in the [edited] comments.

Limericks for Something Completely Different—National Poetry Month 2024

We’ve been doing some heavy lifting the past few days in the annual National Poetry Month series—grim history, heavy current events, serious religion, and a doleful look at the planet’s future.  Time to lighten things up! and what could be lighter than limericks?  Like Japanese haiku,  limericks are very short form poems with strict form.  Unlike haiku they are not ethereal, spiritual, or calming.  On the contrary they are bawdy—often lewd—disrespectful, rude, and sassy.  Even “clean” limericks for children are often rowdy, rebellious, and mischievous.

A limerick must consist of five lines. The first, second, and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables while rhyming and having the same verbal rhythm. The third and fourth lines only have to have five to seven syllables and have to rhyme with each other and have the same rhythm.  That’s an a-a-b-b-a rhyme scheme for those of you keeping score at home.

The form appeared in England in the early 18th Century and was  popularized by Edward Lear, an artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense  in the 19th Century.  As a form of folk verse its origins may be much older. Gershon Legman compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene to which literary heavy weights Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw concurred. Lear described the clean limerick as a “periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity”.

The connection between the limerick and the Irish County of the same name are satisfactorily obscure but may derive from an earlier form of a nonsense verse parlor game that traditionally included a refrain that included “Will [or won’t] you come (up) to Limerick?”  But perhaps it was simply because a little Old Sod poteen, loosened the tongue and inhibitions for ribald play.

The most famous limerick of all was considered so obscene that it seldom saw print, although it was recited in many a bar room.

There was a young man from Nantucket

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

    He said with a grin

    As he wiped off his chin,

“If my ear was a cunt I would fuck it.

 

                                        Edward Lear, 1866.

Despite his opinion, that limericks were generally obscene, the ones Edward Lear wrote and published in his 1875 Book of Nonsense did not offend Victorian morality.  But these two seem to include a sly double entendre.

There was an Old Man who said, “Hush!

I perceive a young bird in this bush!

When they said, “Is it small?”

He replied, “Not at all!

It is four times as big as the bush!”

 

—Edward Lear

 

There was a Young Lady of Dorking,

Who bought a large bonnet for walking;

But its colour and size,

So bedazzled her eyes,

That she very soon went back to Dorking.

 

—Edward Lear

One from America’s comic poet.

Here is a more modern example of the old fashion filthy absolutely guaranteed to offend.

The lass I brought home was a prize,

With an alluring set of bright eyes,

Her breasts, so well kept,

Were what I’d expect,

But her penis was quite a surprise!

Limericks are frequently used as political satire—usually scurrilous and—you should pardon the expression—below the belt employed by partisans of the Right and the Left with equal zest.

The President’s loud protestation

On his fall to his intern’s temptation:

“This affair is still moral

As long as it’s oral

Straight screwing I save for the nation.

 

 

A president famed for his spite*

Tweeted “I am outstandingly bright.

I’d be perfectly able

To muck out any stable

Because I am a genius at shite!

 

―Jim McLeod

 

Note: The limerick above won the fifth annual Bring your Limericks to Limerick contest, sponsored by the Limerick Writers’ Centre. We found the name of the winning limerick writer ironic, since Trump’s mother was a MacLeod from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides!

 

Dear Donald, when out on the stump

Please don’t lunge at our flag and then hump.

Such an act’s unbecoming

And vulgar — mind-numbing.

What’s your next flag-act? Taking a dump?

 

You get the idea.  Your efforts welcome in the [edited] comments.

 

Poetically Pondering Old Men—National Poetry Month 2022

                            An old man not dead yet.

Maybe it’s the panting after a trip to the grocery store, the pain in my knee and various other body parts, or strapping a breathing gizmo to my face when I go to bed, but I feel more like the Old Man every day.  Without being morose I feel my mortality slipping away day by day.  Not that I plan to check out any time soon.  At least a couple of doctors recently assured me that I will be around and annoying for the foreseeable future with just a few lifestyle adjustments—cutting out sugar and the kind of moderate exercise I can actually do.

But like a lot of geezers past whatever landmarks are meaningful to them, I have been thinking a lot lately about being an old man.  I found some other poets who have been doing the same—white men all and only three out of five of them dead.

C.G. Hanzlicek.

The first poem on the subject that caught my attention was To Be a Danger by C.G. Hanzlicek who was born in Minnesota to a Czech immigrant craftsman and a farmer’s daughter.  He made it into the University of Minnesota where he became interested in poetry.  Hanzlicek is the author of nine books of poetry: Living in It, Stars, winner of the 1977 Devins Award for Poetry; Calling the Dead; A Dozen for Leah; When There Are No Secrets; Mahler: Poems and Etchings; Against Dreaming; The Cave: Selected and New Poems; and, most recently, The Lives of Birds.  In 2001, he retired from California State University, Fresno, where he taught for 35 years and was for most of those years the director of the Creative Writing Program.

To Be a Danger

Just once I’d like to be a danger

To something in this world,

Be hunted by cops

And forced into hiding in the mountains,

Since if they left me on the streets

I’d turn the country around,

Changing everyone’s mind with a word.

 

But I’ve lived so long a quiet life,

In a world I've made small,

That even my own mind changes slowly.

I’m a danger only to myself,

Like the daydreaming night watchman

Smoking his cigar

Near the dynamite shed.

 

—C.G. Hanzlicek

 

Ogden Nash.

Next up is American comic poet Ogden Nash known for his short, pithy verses and limericks.  In this widely re-published verse, a certain melancholy lurks behind the mirth.

 

Old Men

 

People expect old men to die,

They do not really mourn old men.

Old men are different. People look

At them with eyes that wonder when…

People watch with unshocked eyes;

But the old men know when an old man dies.

 

—Ogden Nash

 

                                  Edward Thomas.

When the Great War broke out.  Already in his late 30s he vacillated over whether to enlist.  Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting. He was influenced in this decision by his friend the American Robert Frost, who had returned to the U.S. after taking walking trips with Thomas.  Frost sent him an advance copy of The Road Not Taken. The poem was intended by Frost as a gentle mocking of indecision, particularly the indecision that Thomas had shown on their many walks together.  Most took the poem more seriously than Frost intended, and Thomas took it personally, and it Edward Thomas never actually got to be old.  The Welsh-born poet was already an established literary figure provided the last straw in his decision to enlist.  Thomas was promoted to corporal, and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. He was killed in action soon after he arrived in France at Arras on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917.

 

Old Man

 

Old Man, or Lad’s-love,—in the name there’s nothing

To one that knows not Lad’s-love, or Old Man,

The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,

Growing with rosemary and lavender.

Even to one that knows it well, the names

Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:

At least, what that is clings not to the names

In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

 

The herb itself I like not, but for certain

I love it, as some day the child will love it

Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush

Whenever she goes in or out of the house.

Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling

The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps

Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs

Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still

But half as tall as she, though it is as old;

So well she clips it. Not a word she says;

And I can only wonder how much hereafter

She will remember, with that bitter scent,

Of garden rows, and ancient damson-trees

Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,

A low thick bush beside the door, and me

Forbidding her to pick.

 

                                            As for myself,

Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.

I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,

Sniff them and think and sniff again and try

Once more to think what it is I am remembering,

Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,

Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,

With no meaning, than this bitter one.

 

I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray

And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;

Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait

For what I should, yet never can, remember:

No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush

Of Lad’s-love, or Old Man, no child beside,

Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;

Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

 

—Edward Thomas

 

Robert Frost.

Speaking of Frost, we naturally assume that New Hampshire’s beloved poet would have something to meditate on.  Frost was adept at capturing scene and mood while reveling in his craftsmanship with verse.  Here he found pathos in an elderly man’s isolation and loneliness.

 

An Old Man’s Winter Night

 

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon,—such as she was,

So late-arising,—to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man—one man—can’t fill a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

 

—Robert Frost

This Old Man.

Of course, the Old Man has chipped in too, relatively unembarrassed to hitch his wagon to his betters.  Take this from last Fall.

Equinox Eve Morn

September 21, 2021

Murfin Estate

Crystal Lake

 

The first few leaves flutter down

            from the old, slowly dying Boxelder

            in the breaking grey light of dawn,

            most of the thinning leaves not yet turned.

 

The vigorous five-trunk silver maple

            whose crown enlaces it

            has not even begun to turn

            nor have any of the other trees

            on our small lot.

 

A wind from the far-off Lake

            breaks yesterday’s heat and humidity,

            on cue the seasons are shifting.

 

Like that old junk tree

            I can feel myself dropping my own leaves

            tentatively but surely.

 

My time, too, is slipping away.

 

—Patrick Murfin