Doggerel Friday: On Purists

THE PURIST

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”

–Ogden Nash

Doggerel Friday: Sir Thopas

Sir Thopas wax a doughty swain:
Whit was his face as paindemain,
      His lippes rede as rose;
His rode is lik scarlet in grain,
And I you telle in good certain
      He hadde a semely nose.

Doggerel Friday: Elegy for Sir Francis Hinsley

They told me, Francis Hinsley, they told me you were hung
With red protruding eye-balls and black protruding tongue;
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had laughed about Los Angeles and now ’tis here you’ll lie;
Here pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore,
Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost nor gone before.

–Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One