My Virtual Reading Room

(From The Penguin Book of Limericks, compiled and edited by E.O. Parrott, with illustrations by Robin Jacques)

[Shakespeare, Hamlet]

Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed?
Was Gertrude incestously wed?
Is there anything certain?
By the fall of the curtain
Almost everyone's certainly dead.

(A. Cinna)

Prince Hamlet thought uncle a traitor
For having it off with his Mater;
Revenge Dad or not--
That's the gist of the plot--
And he did--nine soliloquies later.

(Stanley J. Sharpless)

[Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven]

Once a raven from Pluto's dark shore
Brought the singular news: 'Nevermore.'
'Twas of useless avail
To ask further detail,
His reply was the same as before.

(Anthony Euwer)

[William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality]

In childhood it's easy to feel
The eternal suffusing the real,
But as the beholder gets steadily older,
It doesn't seem such a big deal.

(Nigel Andrew)