Outdistancing the wingèd chariot
A blogger who'd run out of steam
Like many was given to dream,
Saw himself the new Brad,
Muscle-clad, golden lad,
Then fell back to earth with a scream.
Surveying himself in the glass,
Blotch-faced and unbearably crass,
Realised life's unfair
When one's looks have gone: Where?
And all that remains is an ass.
It's time to resort to disguise,
Discard truth in favour of lies,
When time goes too quickly.
Forget being sickly,
Write novels, in fact fiction'lise.
NOTE: These are limericks and are not serious. They're also easy but, because of that, you gotta get the syllables right. That is:
A - 8
A - 8
B - 6
B - 6
A - 8
Get them right and you're allowed a treat: thus the apostrophe in the last line.
Nothing easy for me but I need a treat.
ReplyDeleteAs he sees himself as an ass
and is about to run out of gas
let us applaud his life
his words and his good wife
and let us burry blogger strife and knife
A good way to start my day. Having fun.
Rouchswalwe shan't lose the penchant
ReplyDeleteover and over she's mentioned
the desire to brew
tasteless malts to eshew
for the love of ales most sentient
Prost!
To say that I like and I like
ReplyDeleteis not quite the right note to strike
but since this is a test
and I won't be the best
I'll repeat it as much as I like
A man o'er a keyboard does rage
ReplyDeleteWith stories of advancing age
But there in his fingers
We see that youth lingers
He's going on page after page
To judge from his books and his blog
ReplyDeleteYou'd assume he was merely a sprog,
Who'd have thought that this feller
Quite outstrips Methuselah
Or some old Dane found in a peat bog?
(Alternative first line, 'looks on his blog', but I can't be seen to be too nice to you can I?)
All: Heroic efforts the lot of you. Not all managed the correct syllable count but who's counting (Well I was that's who.) What I didn't attempt to define was the scansion (ie, where the beat or emphasis lies) since it's complicated to explain and I'm never sure of the exact vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteIt would be invidious to choose any of your works to illustrate a scansion error so let me pick one of my own:
In the line "Realised life's unfair" the word "realised" just about squeaks in but only by shifting the beat from the second syllable to the third. What this means is that prior to that word the rhythm would come naturally to someone reading the limerick aloud for the first time, but he/she would have to stop and rehearse "realised" to make it fit.
There's another slightly dodgy moment with "Discard". If this were changed to "I'm opting for truth not for lies" (clumsier, tautological) there would be no rhythmic problem.
MikeM gets the scansion right but in doing so demonstrates why versifiers find words like "o'er" essential.
Lucy accords herself a rhythmic treat (ie, an acknowledged rhythmic error forgiven because of its wittiness) with the Methuselah line.
My compliments on your collective bravery.