Let's not forget "Hiawatha", especially the introduction which always gets me.

[This message has been edited by momdebomb (edited October 03, 2001).]

Indeed.

Yes, I have fond memories of my Dad reciting the opening to Hiawatha... And the Ballad of Sam McGee! One of my favorites. I always think of it when I am cold. I wonder if it is online somewheres? Weirdly, in all the four volumes of the Library of America American Poetry series, which is pretty inclusive, I can find no Service. Am I just blind?

Well, besides Clive's prediliction for really filthy limericks (Clive--my PMbox LOVES really filthy limericks, hint hint), none of these poems is really truly cringe-worthy. Even Casey and Robert Service have their charms. This though will make you lunge for the refrigerator in search of protein to quell the saccharine rush. But it was the first poem besides childhood rhymes that made me love poetry (well, I was 11 when I first read it). It is the title poem from an anthology containing ESVM's "Counting Out Rhyme" and poems by Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Robert Francis, Donald Hall, William Carlos Williams, Theodore Roethke, Walter De La Mare, plus the usual host of, shall we say, less successful poems. It's free verse, but if I didn't absolutely love this poem, I doubt I would have read any of the other poems in the book. So it will always have a corner table reserved in my heart.


"Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
Received from a Friend Called Felicity"


During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts
(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)
Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer--
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was--
Watermelons ruled.

Thick pink imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.

---John Tobias


Eh--it's probably the title. LOL.

Off-color limericks are an honored genre in English, published in treasured collections, so I don't think they need be confined to private messages among our members. Here are three favorites:

There was a young lawyer named Rex
who was sadly deficient in sex.
Arraigned for exposure
He said with composure:
'De minimus non curat lex.'

A mathemetician named Hall
Had a hexahedronical ball
And the cube of its weight
Plus his pecker times eight
Is his phone number: give him a call.

and the greatest of them all:

From the depths of the crypt at St. Giles
Came a scream that resounded for miles.
Said the vicar "Good Gracious,
Has Father Ignatius
Forgotten the Bishop has piles?"

LOLOLOL Those are great. Hopefully they make up for my posting that piece of turd. Ah well, as Richard said, there's no accounting for love.

But for those of us who were never uhm exposed to Latin, what does that phrase mean?

I went wandering around the web to check my recollection of Vitai Lampada, and came across this charming poem.
I do believe Golias would like it:

Imogen

LADIES, where were your bright eyes glancing,
Where were they glancing yesternight?
Saw ye Imogen dancing, dancing,
Imogen dancing all in white?
Laughed she not with a pure delight,
Laughed she not with a joy serene,
Stepped she not with a grace entrancing,
Slenderly girt in silken sheen?

All through the night from dusk to daytime
Under her feet the hours were swift,
Under her feet the hours of playtime
Rose and fell with a rhythmic lift:
Music set her adrift, adrift,
Music eddying towards the day
Swept her along as brooks in Maytime
Carry the freshly falling may.

Ladies, life is a changing measure,
Youth is a lilt that endeth soon;
Pluck ye never so fast at pleasure
Twilight follows the longest noon.
Nay, but here is a lasting boon,
Life for hearts that are old and chill,
Youth undying for hearts that treasure
Imogen dancing, dancing still.

Sir Henry Newbolt

Alicia, that must be a very wonderful memory.

Tom, that poem is wonderful, I don't care if it is a bit sappy.

Tim, very funny.

There once was a man from Madras
who's balls were made out of glass.
He banged them together
and played "Stormy Weather"
and lightning blew out of his ass.

I never mind limerics in my pm box either :)


------------------
Sharon P.
http://www.fischerpassmoredesign.com

Sharon, that's another old favorite. Tom, the phrase means "The law does not concern itself with trifles." Many thanks, David, for that exquisite poem.

While we wait for Clive (and others) to post their favorites, here are two more which crowded their way into my salacious, capacious memory.

There was a young man from Racine
Who invented a fucking machine.
Both concave and convex,
It could fit either sex
With attachments for those in between.


There was a young parson named Bings
Who lectured on God and such things,
But his secret desire
Was a boy in the choir
With a bottom like jelly on springs.