[basil ransome-davies]

I don't know that limerick, only the nursery jingle about the little girl who 'had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid' (or in the lubricious cynic's rewriting, 'very very popular').

[basil ransome-davies]

Alf Tennyson has 'All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave' in The Lotos-Eaters

[Susan McLean]

Thanks, Basil and John, for the additional comments on "toward." (I hadn't realized that "towards" is more common there). I did know that the British tend to pronounce the word with two syllables (it's one to me). I had originally decided to keep it for the metrical variation it added to the line, but Jayne's comment made me think I would just look like an ignorant American who couldn't scan. I thought I had changed it to "at" but my edit seems not to have taken. I did not mean to imply a conscious decision to hit the tree, though, so I think I will substitute "blindly" for "calmly."

Susan

[John Whitworth]

Game, set and match to Bazza. Tennyson is about as English as it is possible to get. He liked to lie in a hot bath for hours as all true Englishmen do. In the interests of scholarship I append the limerick. Those of saintly disposition avert your eyes NOW.

There was a young man of Dundee
Who molested an ape in a tree.
The result was quite horrid,
All arse and no forehead,
Three balls and a purple goatee.

One would suppose the thing was a baboon but it won't rhyme.

[basil ransome-davies]

Funny, & so graphic.

[Marion Shore]

I couldn't sleep until I finished this one.


Da Vinci burned the midnight oil,
as did the Bard, without whose toil
today we'd lack a ‘Mona Lisa',
a ‘Hamlet’ and a ‘Julius Caesar’;
think of the operas, symphonies,
we’d lack if Mozart made more z’s.
Had Descartes not been wont to lie
awake, would he have watched that fly?
How many dawns did Einstein see
while pondering relativity?
...All ye who lie there courting sleep,
if you'll just give up counting sheep
while tossing on those restless seas,
you might create a masterpiece:
a painting or an epic verse,
a treatise on the universe,
an opera or a symphony--
but, failing that, just watch TV.

[Birthe Myers]

Marion,
That is delicious!

[Roger Slater]

Good one, Marion. I think it will finish in the money.

If you can tweak a bit before the deadline, maybe avoiding the verse/verse rhyme for example, it would be nice, but I don't think it's essential unless you want to bag the fiver and achieve lasting fame.

[Marion Shore]

Thanks, Birthe, and Bob.

I had a feeling someone would call me on the universe/verse thing. Since winning the fiver has become the be-all end-all of my life, and the only thing that will ever allow me to sleep again, I'll have to give this serious consideration.

May I shamelessly pick any of your minds?

[Roger Slater]

Marion, you went two lines over. You can just loose Descarte and you'll be okay.

PS--
Or better yet, just leave out the verse/verse couplet.