Optional reading

Yes, I am in a poetry mood. Here are some short (actually, progressively longer), fun poems, I find.

1) My first year answering machine message:

Emily Dickinson

By Wendy Cope

Higgledy-piggledy

Emily Dickinson

Liked to use dashes

Instead of full stops.

Nowadays, faced with such

Idiosyncrasy,

Critics and editors

Send for the cops.

2) What my mom recited to us as kids:

The Twins

By Henry Sambrooke Leigh

In form and feature, face and limb,

I grew so like my brother,

That folks got taking me for him,

And each for one another.

It puzzled all our kith and kin,

It reached a fearful pitch;

For one of us was born a twin,

Yet not a soul knew which.

One day, to make the matter worse,

Before our names were fixed,

As we were being washed by nurse,

We got completely mixed;

And thus, you see, by fate's decree,

Or rather nurse's whim,

My brother John got christened me,

And I got christened him.

This fatal likeness even dogged

My footsteps when at school,

And I was always getting flogged,

For John turned out a fool.
I put this question, fruitlessly,

To everyone I knew,

"What would you do, if you were me,

To prove that you were you?"

Our close resemblance turned the tide

Of my domestic life,

For somehow, my intended bride

Became my brother's wife.
In fact, year after year the same

Absurd mistakes went on,

And when I died, the neighbors came

And buried brother John.

3) Part of the Linguistics into to morphology unit:

Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.