The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean -
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
A small boy, who no harm apprehended
To the tree-top serenely ascended
For an immature peach
That hung out of reach
The funeral was largely attended.
There was an old monk of Siberia
Whose life it grew drearier and drearier,
'Till he broke from his cell
With a hell of a yell
And eloped with the Mother Superior.
A decrepit old gas man named Peter,
While hunting around for the meter,
Touched a leak with his light.
He arose out of sight,
And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.
Woodrow Wilson:
I sat next to the Duchess at tea;
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were truly phenomenal,
And everyone thought it was me!
Edward Gorey:
There was a young woman named Plunnery
Who rejoiced in the practice of gunnery,
Till one day unobservant,
She blew up a servant,
And was forced to retire to a nunnery.
(Attributed to) Geoffrey Chaucer:
Ther once was this ladye of Tyre
Whoo fild evry mann with deesiyre
Two sovrins enuff
For youre back setey stuf
But fees for onne nite are much hyer
Leon Blum:
A limerick writer is cursed,
With desire to rhyme every verse,
And it matters how long
Every word in the song
Or the end may be better or worse.
David Woodsford:
The Hoover, in grim silence, sat,
But sucking no more at the mat;
Quietly it grunted
As slowly it shunted,
And messily disgorged the cat.
Elliott Moreton:
There once was a fellow from Xiangling
Whose greatest delight was in mangling
Poems. He would drop
Words between lines and lop
Their ends off, and leave readers dang
O.E. Parrott:
The limerick's birth is unclear:
Its genesis owed much to Lear.
It started as clean,
But soon went obscene.
And this split haunts its later career.
W.H. Auden:
T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas,
Crying: "What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill on the Floss?"
Peter Mason:
There was a young girl from Bayeaux,
Whose hemlines got hayeaux and hayeaux.
But the size of her thighs,
Provoked only surprise
And extinguished the flames of desayeaux.
Carolyn Wells:
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
Said the two to the tutor,
"Is it harder to toot, or
To tutor two tooters to toot?"
Carl Muckenhoupt:
There was a young poet quite fine,
Whose limericks repeated a line.
Though this was redundant,
Though this was redundant,
His limericks repeated a line.
William S. Gilbert:
There was an old man of St. Bees
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp.
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I'm sure glad it wasn't a hornet."
Ed Cunningham:
As the natives got ready to serve
A midget explorer named Merve;
"This meal will be brief,"
Said the cannibal chief,
"For this is at best an hors d'oeuvre."
Morris Bishop:
The limerick is furtive and mean;
You must keep her in close quarantine,
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk, and obscene.
Ogden Nash:
There was a young belle of old Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She drawled, "When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez!"
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
There was a young lady called Harris
That nothing could ever embarrass
Till the bath salts, one day
In the tub where she lay
Turned out to be Plaster of Paris.
An old Danish jester named Yorick
Drank a gallon of pure paregoric
'My jokes have been dull'
He said,'But my skull
Will one of these days be historic'.
A jolly young fellow from Yuma
Told an elephant joke to a puma;
Now his skeleton lies
Beneath hot western skies -
The puma had no sense of huma.
A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison
And had an affair with a Saracen;
She was not over-sexed,
Or jealous, or vexed,
She just wanted to make a comparison.