The Sniffle
In spite of her sniffle
Isabel's chiffle.
Some girls with a sniffle
Would be weepy and tiffle;
They would look awful,
Like a rained-on waffle,
But Isabel's chiffle
In spite of her sniffle.
Her nose is more red
With a cold in her head,
But then, to be sure,
Her eyes are bluer.
Some girls with a snuffle,
Their tempers are uffle.
But when Isabel's snivelly
She's snivelly civilly,
And when she's snuffly
She's perfectly luffly.
poem by Ogden Nash
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Lines To Be Embroidered On A Bib
The Child Is Father Of The Man, But Not For Quite A While
So Thomas Edison
Never drank his medicine;
So Blackstone and Hoyle
Refused cod-liver oil;
So Sir Thomas Malory
Never heard of a calory;
So the Earl of Lennox
Murdered Rizzio without the aid of vitamins or calisthenox;
So Socrates and Plato
Ate dessert without finishing their potato;
So spinach was too spinachy
For Leonardo da Vinaci;
Well, it's all immaterial,
So eat your nice cereal,
And if you want to name your ration,
First go get a reputation.
poem by Ogden Nash
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The People Upstairs
The people upstairs all practise ballet
Their living room is a bowling alley
Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.
Their radio is louder than yours,
They celebrate week-ends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,
And when their fun at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs more
If only they lived on another floor.
poem by Ogden Nash
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Oh To Be Odd!
Hypochondriacs
Spend the winter at the bottom of Florida and the summer on top of
the Adirondriacs.
You go to Paris and live on champagne wine and cognac
If you're dipsomognac.
If you're a manic-depressive
You don't go anywhere where you won't be cheered up, and people say
"There, there!" if your bills are excessive.
But you stick around and work day and night and night and day with
your nose to the sawmill.
If you're nawmill.
Note: Dipsomaniac -- alcoholic
poem by Ogden Nash
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Tableau at Twilight
I sit in the dusk. I am all alone.
Enter a child and an ice-cream cone.
A parent is easily beguiled
By sight of this coniferous child.
The friendly embers warmer gleam,
The cone begins to drip ice cream.
Cones are composed of many a vitamin.
My lap is not the place to bitamin.
Although my raiment is not chinchilla,
I flinch to see it become vanilla.
Coniferous child, when vanilla melts
I’d rather it melted somewhere else.
Exit child with remains of cone.
I sit in the dusk. I am all alone,
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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One Third Of The Calendar
In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.
In February the blizzard whirls.
We own a pair of little girls.
Blessings upon of each the head ----
The one in school and the one in bed.
March is the month of cringe and bluster.
Each of our children has a sister.
They cling together like Hansel and Gretel,
With their noses glued to the benzoin kettle.
April is made of impetuous waters
And doctors looking down throats of daughters.
If we had a son too, and a thoroughbred,
We'd have a horse,
And a boy,
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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To My Valentine
More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.
I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.
As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.
I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty
Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.
Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.
Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.
Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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Listen...
There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, “Let me out!”
That solitary prisoner
Will never hear reply.
No comrade in eternity
Can hear the frantic cry.
No heart can share the terror
That haunts his monstrous dark.
The light that filters through the chinks
No other eye can mark.
When flesh is linked with eager flesh,
And words run warm and full,
I think that he is loneliest then,
The captive in the skull.
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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The Solitary Huntsman
The solitary huntsman
No coat of pink doth wear,
But midnight black from cap to spur
Upon his midnight mare.
He drones a tuneless jingle
In lieu of tally-ho:
“I’ll catch a fox
And put him in a box
And never let him go.”
The solitary huntsman,
He follows silent hounds.
No horn proclaims his joyless sport,
And never a hoofbeat sounds.
His hundred hounds, his thousands,
Their master’s will they know:
To catch a fox
And put him in a box
And never let him go.
[...] Read more
poem by Ogden Nash
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