(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)

The Tables Turned

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

William Wordsworth

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"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

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