Friday, October 9, 2009

There was a young person from Perth (Unknown)

Okay, so I lied again. Tonight is not the night for Prufrock. When will it come? Perhaps tomorrow. Who knows. This is the night for another light limerick. (Is there any other kind? Has someone subverted the style and made a tragic one?) Like the last time, I neither know who wrote the poem nor can I find it online. I will copy in full here and hope that Unknown never finds out.

There was a young person from Perth,
Who was born on the day of his birth.
He was married, they say,
On his wife`s wedding day
And died when he quitted this earth.

The two limericks that I have talked about are my favorites. In this one, I love the bright originality hiding in the uneducated speech of the last line. High-larious! I also love this poem for doing a common thing--telling the history of a person--with none of the usual turns of phrase.

Favorite line: "He was married, they say,/On his wife's wedding day"

3 comments:

  1. I first heard this limerick in the mid 1950s when I was a young kid. For me it went like this:

    There was a man from Perth,
    Who was born on the day of his birth.
    He was married, they say
    On his wife's wedding day.
    And he died when his life left the Earth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. for me the same but the last line is and he died on his last day on earth


      Delete
  2. There was a man from Perth, who was born on the day of his birth. He was married they say on his wife's wedding day. And he died on his last day on Earth.

    ReplyDelete

What do you think of today's poem?