★ Epigrams

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch some heavy water,

They mixed it with the dairy milk

And killed my youngest daughter. Paul Dehn

Flight Sergeant Foster flattened Gloucester

In a shower of rain.

(A Mr Hutton had pressed the wrong button

On the coast of Maine.) Paul Dehn

Hark, the herald angels sing

Glory to the newborn thing

Which, because of radiation,

Will be cared for by the nation. Paul Dehn

God in His wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why. Ogden Nash, The Fly

Some primal termite knocked on wood;

and tasted it, and found it good.

That is why your Cousin May

fell through the parlor floor today. Ogden Nash

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,

I'll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1933

Good wine needs no bush,

And perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push.

Why not?

Look at pot. Ogden Nash

The camel has a single hump;

The dromedary, two;

Or else the other way around,

I’m never sure. Are you? Ogden Nash, The Cow, 1931

’Tis bad enough in man or woman

To steal a goose from off a common;

But surely he’s without excuse

Who steals a common from the goose. Anonymous, cited Carey’s Commonplace Book of Epigrams, 1872

Here lies one who for medicines would not give

A little gold, and so his life he lost;

I fancy now he’d wish again to live,

Could he but guess how much his funeral cost. Anonymous

We’re all dry with drinking on’t,

The piper kissed the fiddler’s wife,

And I can’t sleep for thinking on’t. Anonymous, We’re All Dry

See the happy moron,

He doesn’t give a damn,

I wish I were a moron,

My God! Perhaps I am! Author unknown, cited Eugenics Review July 1929

There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it hardly becomes any of us

To talk about the rest of us. Author unknown

Would you like to sin

With Elinor Glyn

On a tigerskin?

Or would you prefer

To err

With her

On some other fur? Author unknown, 1907 rhyme, cited A Glyn, 1955

Most gracious Queen, we thee implore

To go away and sin no more,

But if that effort be too great,

To go away at any rate. Author unknown, epigram on Caroline of Brunswick, cited Francis Burton’s letter to Lord Colchester 15th November 1820

Dr Crippen killed Belle Elmore

Ran away from Miss le Neve

Right across the ocean blue

Followed by Inspector Dew

Ship’s ahoy, naughty boy! Popular children’s song

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The lion beat the unicorn

All round the town. Manuscript inscription c.1691

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks;

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one! Popular rhyme, re acquittal of Lizzie Borden June 1893 Massachusetts

They hang the man and flog the woman

They steal the goose from off the common,

But let the greater villain loose

That steals the common from the goose.

The law demands they we atone

When we take things we do not own,

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who take things that are yours and mine. Nursery Rhyme @1764

God made the wicked Grocer

For a mystery and a sign,

That men might shun the awful shops

And go to inns to dine. G K Chesterton 1874-1936

God and the doctor we alike adore

But only when in danger, not before;

The danger o’er, both are alike requited,

God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted. John Owen, Epigrams

What I like about Clive

Is that he is no longer alive.

There is a good deal to be said

For being dead. Edmund Clerihew Bentley, 1875-1956, Biography for Beginners, 1905

George the Third

Ought never to be occurred.

One can only wonder

At so grotesque a blunder. Edmund Clerihew Bentley

The Art of Biography

Is different from Geography.

Geography is about Maps,

But Biography is about Chaps. Edmund Clerihew Bentley

I am not Mahomet. –

Far from it.

That is the mistake

All of you seem to make. Edmund Clerihew Bentley

There exists no proof as

To who shot William Rufus,

But shooting him would seem

To have been quite a sound scheme. Edmund Clerihew Bentley 1875-1956, English writer

Sir Humphrey Davy

Abominated gravy.

He lived in the odium

Of having discovered Sodium. Edmund Clerihew Bentley, 1875-1956, Biography for Beginners, 1905

George the First was always reckoned

Vile, but viler George the Second;

And what mortal ever heard

Any good of George the Third?

When from earth the Fourth descended

God be praised the Georges ended. Walter Savage Landor, epigram cited The Atlas 28th April 1855