Thursday, March 27, 2008

Street Life (Clerihews and Limericks)

Walking across Waterloo bridge this morning I was enumerating to myself those buildings that I could identify. Chief amongst them being, of course, St Paul's Cathedral where Mary and I got married.

Into my head popped a piece of trivia I inherited from my father, also an architect: a Clerihew about the architect of that fine building:

Sir Christopher Wren
Said "I am going to dine with some men.
"If anybody calls,
Say I am designing St Paul's."

The unbalanced and unpolished poetic meter and line length parody the limerick, which in turn reminded me of:

There was a young man of Japan
Whose verses never would scan.
When they said, "But the thing
Doesn't go with a swing,
He replied, "No, but I try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can!" [1]

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