Lays of Ancient Rome

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods."

Lays of Ancient Rome is a collection of narrative poems, or lays, by Thomas Macaulay

The Lays were composed by Macaulay in his thirties, during his spare time while he was the "legal member" of the Governor-General of India's Supreme Council from 1834 to 1838. He later wrote of them:

The plan occurred to me in the jungle at the foot of the Neilgherry hills; and most of the verses were made during a dreary sojourn at Ootacamund and a disagreeable voyage in the Bay of Bengal.[

roses are red

Roses are red,
that much is true,
 but violets are purple,
 not fucking blue.

They are indeed purple,
 But one thing you’ve missed:
 The concept of “purple”
 Didn’t always exist.

Some cultures lack names
 For a color, you see.
 Hence good old Homer
 And his “wine-dark sea.”

A usage so quaint,
 A phrasing so old,
 For verses of romance
 Is sheer fucking gold.

So roses are red.
 Violets once were called blue.
 I’m hugely pedantic
 But what else is new?

My friend you’re not wrong
 About Homer’s wine-ey sea!
 Colours are a matter
 Of cultural contingency;

Words are in flux
 And meanings they drift
 But the word purple
 You’ve given short shrift.

The concept of purple,
 My friends, is old
 And refers to a pigment
 once precious as gold.

By crushing up molluscs
 From the wine-dark sea
 You make a dye:
 Imperial decree

Meant that in Rome,
 to wear purpura
 was a privilege reserved
 For only the emperor!

The word ‘purple’,
 for clothes so fancy,
 Entered English
 By the ninth century

Why then are voilets
 Not purple in song?
 The dye from this mollusc,
 known for so long

Is almost magenta;
 More red than blue.
 The concept of purple
 is old, and yet new.

The dye is red,
 So this might be true:
 Roses are purple
 And violets are blue

While this song makes me merry,
 Tyrian purple dyes many a hue
 From magenta to berry
 And a true purple too.

But fun as it is to watch this poetic race
 The answer is staring you right in the face:
 Roses are red and violets are blue
 Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.

http://sabaatahir.tumblr.com/post/167606616735/squeeful-ineptshieldmaid#notes

Submarine Sailor, rest your oar

Sailor, rest your oar
When your final dive is made, and your battery's running low,
You'll know there lies a boat for you many fathoms here below,
With your annunciators jammed on full and your depth guage needles bent,
Your accumulator's dry of oil and your air banks all are spent,
It's then you get to wonderin', "is my life's boat rigged for dive?"
Your guessing drill commences, "am i dead or still alive?"
You pace the flooded decks with scorn and curse the flaws of man.
Into realms of rex you've stepped, and here you'll make your stand.
To live your life, as sailors must, at the bottom of the sea.
There's one you'll have to reckon-that one, my friend, is thee.
Will your conscience do you justice when the final muster's in?
Did you lead the kind of life you should in every port you've been?
The answers to these questions and many, many more,
Are locked in the hearts of sailormen from Cannes to Singapore.
So, when your day for mast rolls 'round. the choice is up to you,
Sailor chart your course of life right now. chart it straight and true.
Now's the time to flood your tanks and trim up 'fore and aft.
It's a trifle late when the klaxon sounds to square away your craft.
Your final billet lies below, on "old ocean's" floor.
So, be ready when that last word's passed.
Sailor, rest your oar!

Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer
. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks

The Raven

There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore.”


Footprints in the Sand

 There was a man who, at low tide
Would walk with the Lord by his side
Jesus said “Now look back;
You’ll see one set of tracks.
That’s when you got a piggy-back ride.”


Response to ‘This Is Just To Say’

This note on the fridge is to say
 That those ripe plums that you put away
 Well, I ate them last night
They tasted all right
Plus I slept with your sister. M'kay?


Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

There once was a horse-riding chap
Who took a trip in a cold snap
He stopped in the snow
But he soon had to go:
He was miles away from a nap.


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

There was an old father of Dylan
Who was seriously, mortally illin’
“I want,” Dylan said
 “You to bitch till you’re dead.
“I’ll be pissed if you kick it while chillin’.”


I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

There once was a poet named Will
Who tramped his way over a hill
And was speechless for hours
Over some stupid flowers
This was years before TV, but still.

http://thepoetrycollection-blog.tumblr.com/post/3729492718/famous-poems-rewritten-as-limericks

The Sea

She was rich and of high degree;
A poor and unknown artist he.
"Paint me," she said, "a view of the sea."
So he painted the sea as it looked the day
That Aphrodite arose from its spray;
And it broke, as she gazed on its face
Into its countless-dimpled smile.
'What a poky, stupid picture!" said she;
I+I don't believe he can paint the sea!"
Then he painted a raging, tossing sea,
Storming, with fierce and sudden shock,
Wild cries, and writhing tongues of foam,
A towering, mighty fastness-rock.
In its sides, above those leaping crests,
The thronging sea-birds built their nests.
"What a disagreeable daub!" said she;
"Why, it isn't anything lib the sea!"
Then he painted a stretch of hot, brown sand,
With a big hotel on either hand,
And a handsome pavilion for the band
Not a sign of the water to be seen
Except one faint little streak of green.
"What a perfectly exquisite picture!" said she;
"It~s the very image of the sea!"

Ev A L. OGDEN. -The Century Magazine, December, 1881.

Booker T Washington

A year or two before his death, that great man, Booker T. Washington, made an address in a small town in Georgia. When he had finished a distinguished looking old confederate soldier pushed forward to the platform his face aglow with enthusiasm. "Professah Washington," he declared, "I want to do now what I nevah thought ah'd be doin'; I want to shake yoh hand and pledge you my support in the great work you are doin'. That was the best speech I evah heard in mah life and you are the greatest man in the country today."