[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Folks,

I'm writing an introduction for which I need more examples of amazing, funny, witty, and/or rhetorically complex couplets. This sort of thing:

You are not beautiful exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.

--Marvin Bell


Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another shits.

--Alexander Pope

What are your faves?

Thanks, Tony

[Susan McLean]

Here are a few of my favorite English epigrams. Most of them need the title to set them up. They all can be found in X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's An Introduction to Poetry.

Alexander Pope, "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness"

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?


Sir John Harrington,"Of Treason"

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.


Brad Leithauser, "A Venus Flytrap"

The humming fly is turned to carrion.
This vegetable's no vegetarian.


Anonymous, "Epitaph on a Dentist"

Stranger, approach this spot with gravity;
John Brown is filling his last cavity.


Hilare Belloc, "Fatigue"

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Susan

[Gregory Dowling]

Here are a few famous ones:

Andrew Marvell:
The grave’s a fine and private place
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Shakespeare:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Alexander Pope:
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed

And a few final couplets from Don Juan:
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?

Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.

There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

Gaunt famine never shall approach the throne.
Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone.

There was the purest platonism at bottom
Of all his feelings - only he forgot 'em.

[John Whitworth]

From dusty shops neglected authors come,
Martyrs of Pies and Relics of the Bum.

And when false flowers of rhetoric thou woulds't cull,
Trust Nature, do not labour to be dull;
But write thy best, and to; and in each line,
Sir Formal's oratory will be thine.

With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satyrs never bite.
In thy felonious heart, though Venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen and dies.

All from Mac Flecknoe by John Dryden

[Erik Olson]

First, Ben Jonson

XXIV. — TO THE PARLIAMENT.

There's reason good, that you good laws should make :
Men's manners ne'er were viler, for your sake.


LXXI.— ON COURT PARROT.

To pluck down mine, sets up new wits still;
Still 'tis his luck to praise me 'gainst his will.

To quote Pope is to readily feed this thread with material; I have done so here, almost at random. So much is lost when the context is, of course, which is to be lamented. Nevertheless...

YES, thank my stars! as early as I knew
This town, I had the sense to hate it too;

Yet like the Papist’s is the Poet’s state,
Poor and disarmed, and hardly worth your hate!

One, one man only breeds my just offence,
Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence:

For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
Only to show, how many tastes he wanted.

On human actions reason tho’ you can,
It may be reason, but it is not man:

from The Essay on Criticism

If Maevius Scribble in Apollo's spight,
There are, who judge still worse than he can write...

Some have at first for Wits, then Poets past,
Turned Critics next, and proved plain Fools at last;
Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,
As heavy Mules are neither Horse or Ass.
Those half-learned Witlings, num'rous in our Isle,
As half-formed Insects on the Banks of Nile:
Unfinished Things, one knows not what to call,
Their Generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, would a hundred Tongues require,
Or one vain Wit's, that might a hundred tire...

All seems Infected that th' Infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the Jaundiced Eye.

John Frederick Nims is among my favorite proficients of the epigram.

Censorship

Love cautions, "Adults only!" While below
Death has the children to his filthy show.

Crutches and Canes

Feisty old men, their battle cry a cough,
Flourish their sticks at earth, to warn it off.

Proverb

"Can't put an old head on young shoulders." No?
Can too. Come closer, dear. You do it so.

Philosopher

He scowled at the barometer: "Will it rain?"
None heard, with all that pattering on the pane.

At Writers' Conference

"Well, love me, love my dog." I'll cuddle the mutt.
"And love me, love my poetry."
"And love me, love my poetry. love me,. love. myp"Love your whut?

Prolific

Of all the million words rank Grubber spewed,
Just two gave genuine pleasure: "To conclude, . . . "

[Tony Barnstone]

Wow! Thank you, everybody! These are great.

[Roger Slater]

Two by Ogden Nash:


A child need not be very clever
To learn that "Later, dear" means "Never."

*

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance

[Gail White]

Of course, Tony can just go to assesofparnassus.tumblr.com and find all kinds of short witty stuff, much of it by Spherians.

[Mary Meriam]

Summary of Lord Lyttelton's Advice to a Lady

Be plain in dress and sober in your diet;
In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.

~Mary Wortley Montagu