LIGHT VERSE
1.WASTE
Harry Graham
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.
2.THE PERFECT RREACTIONARY
Hughes Mearns
As I was sitting in my chair
I knew the bottom wasn’t there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.
3.THE HAPPY BOUNDING FLEA
Roland Young
And here’s the happy bounding flea---
You cannot tell the he from she.
The sexes look alike, you see,
But she can tell, and so can he!
4.MY FACE
Anthony Euwer
As a beauty I’m a great star,
There are others more handsome, by far,
But my face---I don’t mind it
For I am behind it,
It’s the people in front get the jar!
5.ROOD
Anonymous
There was a young lady named Rood,
Who was such an absolute prude
That she pulled down the blind
When changing her mind,
Lest curious eyes should intrude.
6.POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Howard Nemerov
Why are the stamps adorned with kings and presidents?
That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
7.FATIGUE
Hilaire Belloc
I’m tired of LOVE: I’m still more tired of RHYME.
But MONEY gives me pleasure all the time.
8.LETTERS
Anonymous
Lives of great men all remind us
As their pages o’er we turn,
That we’re apt to leave behind us
Letters that we ought to burn.
9.I SAW A MAN PURSING
Stephen Crane
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never---“
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.
10.IANTHE
W. S. Lander
From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples down a sunny river;
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.
11.THE SPUR
W. B. Yeats
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
12.OLD MAN FROM PERU
Anonymous
There was an old man from Peru
Who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He woke in a fright
In the middle of the night
And found it was perfectly true.
13.THE OPTIMIST
D. H. Lawrence
The optimist builds himself safe inside a cell
And paints the inside walls sky-blue
And blocks up the door
And says he’s in heaven.
14.A CHRISTIAN
Thomas Russell Ybarra
A Christian is a man who feels
Repentance on a Sunday
For what he did on Saturday
And is going to do on Monday.
15.AN EPICURE
Anonymous
An epicure, dining at Crewe,
Found quite a large mouse in his stew.
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout,
And wave it about,
Or the rest will be wanting one, too!”
16.THE SWAN-SONG
S.T. Coleridge
Swans sing before they die---‘twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.
17.PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST
F. Langbridge
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
18.CATCH
Langston Hughes
Big boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the merdaid
Had her tail
Curled
Beneath his arm.
Being a fisher boy,
He’d found a fish
To caryy---
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.
19.WISHES
Anonymous
If wishes were horses,
Beggars would ride;
If turnips were watches,
I would wear one by my side.
20.HAIR
Samuel Hoffenstein
Babies haven’t any hair;
Old men’s heads are just as bare;---
Between the cradle and the grave
Lies a haircut and a shave.
21.NEEDLES AND PINS
Anonymous
Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When you get married your trouble begins.
22.I MAY, I MIGHT, I MUST
Marianne Moore
If you will tell me why the fen
Appears impassable, I then
Will tell you why I think that I
Can get across it if I try.
23.MY SOUL
Anonymous
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
24.MISCONCEPTIONS
Robert Browning
This is a spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
Oh, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray’s, which the flying feet hung to, ---
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!
25.AGAIN! AGAIN!
Stanley Kunitz
Love knocked again at my door:
I tossed her a bucket of bones.
From each bone springs a soldier
Who shoots me as stranger.
26.A FLASH
Anonymous
Here lies a man who was killed by lightning;
He died when his prospects seemed to be brightening,
He might have cut a flash in this world of trouble,
But a flash cut him, and he lies in the stubble.
27.TARTS
D. H. Lawrence
I suppose tarts are called tarts because they ‘re tart,
Meaning sour, make you pull a long face after.
And I suppose most girls are a bit tarty to-day,
So that’s why so many young men have long faces.
28. A QUESTION MY ASKED ME
Nancy Willard
Who tied my navel? Did Goad tie it?
God made the thread: O man, live forever!
Man made the knot: enough is enough.
29.DEVOTION
Robert Frost
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean---
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
30.FAULTS
Sara Teasdale
They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before;---
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.
31.AN EPITAPH
Walter de la Mare
Here lies a most beautiful lady;
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare---rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West country.
32.ON GUT
Ben Jonson
Gut eats all day and leaders all the night,
So all his meat he tasteth over twice;
And, striving so to double his delight,
He makes himself a thoroughfare of vice.
Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin,
Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.
33.NOT JUST FOR THE RIDE
Anonymous
There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger:
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
34.BE OFF
Stevie Smith
I’m sorry to say my dear wife is a dreamer,
And as she dreams she gets paler and leaner.
“Then be off to your Dream, with his fly-away hat,
I’ll stay with the girls who are happy and fat.”
35.THERE WAS A YOUNG LADY OF KENT
Anonymous
There was a young lady of Kent,
Who said that she knew what it meant
When men asked her to dine,
And served cocktails and wine;
She knew, oh she knew!---but she went!
36.ON AN INFANT EIGHT MONTHS OLD
Anonymous
Since I have been so quickly done for,
I wonder what I was begun for.
37.THE FLY
Ogden Nash
The Lord in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
38.A PROMISE MADE
Anonymous
A promise made
Is a debt unpaid.
39.FOR A MOUTHY WOMAN
Countee Cullen
God and the devil still are wrangling
Which should have her, which repel,
God wants no discord in his heaven;
Satan has enough in hell.
40.AN ANSWER TO THE PARSON
William Blake
“Why of the sheep do you not learn peace?”
“Because I don’t want you to shear my fleece.”
41.A BEAUTY
Anonymous
There once was a maid with such graces,
That her curves cried aloud for embraces.
“You look,” said McGee,
“Like a million to me---
Invested in all the right places!”
42.EPIGRAM
Matthew Prior
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool.
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.
43.A TUTOR AND TWO TOOTERS
Anonymous
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two tooter to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it harder to toot or
To tutor two tooters to toot?”
44.A MAN SAW A BALL OF GOLD
Stephen Crane
A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it---
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
45.THE WISE OLD OWL
Edward H. Richards
A wise old owl sat on an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard;
Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?
46.THE OLD MAN WITH A BEARD
Edward Lear
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!---
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
47.MOTHER, MAY I GO AND SWIM?
Anonymous
Mother, may I go and swim?
Yes, my darling daughter.
Hang your clothes on yonder limb,
But don’t go near the water.
48.MOTHER GOOSE’S GARLAND
Archibald MacLeish
Around, around the sun we go:
The moon goes around the earth.
We do not doe of death:
We die of vertigo.
49.NEWS ITEM
Dorothy Parker
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
50.AN EPITAPH
Benjamin Franklin
Here Skugg lies snug
As a bug in a rug.
51.HEAD AND HEART
C.D. B. Ellis
I put my hand upon my hear
And swore that we should never part---
I wonder what I should have said
If I had put it on my head.
52.THE DUCHESS
Anonymous
I sat next the Duchess at a tea,
It was just as I feared it would be;
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simple abominable,
And everyone thought it was me.
53.UNFORGIVABLE AND UNFORGIVEN
C.D.B. Ellis
With Peter I refuse to dine:
His jokes are older than his wine.
With Paul I have not lately dined:
My jokes were broader than his mind.
54.THE WAYFARER
Stephen Crane
The wayfarer
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha, “ he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”
55.REAL ESTATE
Anonymous
There was a young lady of Wantage,
Of whom the Town Clark took advantage.
“said the Country Surveyor,
Of course you must take her;
You’ve altered the line of her frontage.”
56.JORDAN WYATT
Anonymous
Here lies poor stingy Jordan Wyatt
Who died at noon and saved a dinner by it.