BURLESQUE POEMS

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....

Robert Browning

Sir Guy The Crusader

Sir GUY was a doughty crusader,
A muscular knight,
Ever ready to fight,
A very determined invader,
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

Dirge For A Joker

Always in the middle of a kiss
Came the profane stimulus to cough;
Always from teh pulpit during service
Leaned the devil prompting you to laugh.
.....

Sylvia Plath

Portrait

(For S. A.)TO write one book in five years
or five books in one year,
to be the painter and the thing painted,
... where are we, bo?
.....

Carl Sandburg

Pan The Fallen

1 He wandered into the market
2 With pipes and goatish hoof;
3 He wandered in a grotesque shape,
4 And no one stood aloof.
.....

William Wilfred Campbell

A Polar Explorer

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary, And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
.....

Joseph Brodsky

Burlesque

Of the modern versifications of
ancient legendary tales. - An impromptu.

The tender infant, meek and mild,
.....

Samuel Johnson

Christmas - Prose

But is old, old, good old Christmas gone? Nothing but the hair of his good, gray old head and beard left? Well, I will have that, seeing I cannot have more of him.
- HUE AND CRY AFTER CHRISTMAS.


.....

Washington Irving

Sarah Walker

It was very hot. Not a breath of air was stirring throughout the western wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather. The great veranda was deserted; the corridors were desolated; no footfall echoed in the passages; the lazy rustle of a wandering skirt, or a passing sigh that was half a pant, seemed to intensify the heated silence. An intoxicated bee, disgracefully unsteady in wing and leg, who had been holding an inebriated conversation with himself in the corner of my window pane, had gone to sleep at last and was snoring. The errant prince might have entered the slumberous halls unchallenged, and walked into any of the darkened rooms whose open doors gaped for more air, without awakening the veriest Greyport flirt with his salutation. At times a drowsy voice, a lazily interjected sentence, an incoherent protest, a long-drawn phrase of saccharine tenuity suddenly broke off with a gasp, came vaguely to the ear, as if indicating a half-suspended, half-articulated existence somewhere, but not definite enough to indicate conversation. In the midst of this, there was the sudden crying of a child.

I looked up from my work. Through the camera of my jealously guarded window I could catch a glimpse of the vivid, quivering blue of the sky, the glittering intensity of the ocean, the long motionless leaves of the horse-chestnut in the road, all utterly inconsistent with anything as active as this lamentation. I stepped to the open door and into the silent hall.

.....

Bret Harte (francis)

Behind The Scenes

The actor struts his little hour,
Between the limelight and the band;
The public feel the actor's power,
Yet nothing do they understand
.....

Banjo Paterson

Burlesque Lament Fo Wm. Creech's Absence

AULD chuckie Reekie's 1 sair distrest,
Down droops her ance weel burnish'd crest,
Nae joy her bonie buskit nest
Can yield ava,
.....

Robert Burns

In Quantity

On Translations of Homer

Hexameters acrd Pentameters.

.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Don Juan: Canto The Fourth

Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Tent On The Beach

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,--
Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,--
Against the pure ideal which has drawn
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Princess (the Conclusion)

So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Behind The Scenes

The actor struts his little hour,
Between the limelight and the band;
The public feel the actor's power,
Yet nothing do they understand
.....

Banjo Paterson (andrew Barton)

The Dunciad: Appendix

I.--PREFACE

PREFIXED TO THE FIVE FIRST IMPERFECT EDITIONS OF THE DUNCIAD, IN THREE
BOOKS, PRINTED AT DUBLIN AND LONDON, IN OCTAVO AND DUODECIMO, 1727.
.....

Alexander Pope

Burlesque Sonnet. To A Bee

Sweet Insect! that on two small wings doth fly,
And, flying, carry on those wings yourself;
Methinks I see you, looking from your eye,
As tho' you thought the world a wicked elf.
.....

Thomas Gent

Witchcraftism

Oh! Wise one,
Drinking from your cup of wisdom,
That lies in your bosom of wits,
Why drowning in the witchcraft system?
.....

Comfort Boluwatife Opakunbi

The Minneapolis Case

(Tried in Minnesota in 1892)

Kind reader, tarry here, nor miss
The law of Minneapolis.
.....

James Williams

Epilogue To The Indian Emperor, By A Mercury

To all and singular in this full meeting,
Ladies and gallants, Phoebus sends ye greeting.
To all his sons, by whate'er title known,
Whether of court, or coffee-house, or town;
.....

John Dryden

Desire Of The Knowledge

How can I ever express my weak emotions?
How can I ever gridlock you?
I get you unlock, I scroll through you
I quest for the best Farce that ends with the best Happy Note
.....

Benjamin Blessing