Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Fun: Alliterative Absurdities

Alliterative Absurdities

This comic poem originally appeared in the anthology Such Nonsense! edited by Carolyn Wells (1918). Try reading the poem aloud to appreciate the apt alliterations of the anonymous author.

If you caught a captious curate killing kippers for the cook,
In the cloisters with a club yclept1 a cleek2,
Would you say he was as wily
As a cunning crocodily
Catching cockles with a corkscrew in a creek?

If you beheld a battleboat bombarding Biscay Bay
While the big guns bellowed bold from brazen throat,
Would you say it was as funny
As a bouncing blue-backed bunny
Blowing bubbles with a bobby in a boat?

If you saw a driveling dreamer drowning ducklings in a ditch,
And deducting data dry as dust to see,
Would you say that this death-dealer
Was of ducks and drakes a stealer,
Or of Darwin's dead ideas a devotee?

1 An old-fashioned word meaning "called" or "named"
2 A hook or golf club

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