Parkleys Poets: The Limericks

There once was a poet called Brooke whose poems all fit in one book…

There once was a poet called Brooke
Whose poems all fit in one book.
His sonnet was on it
Like a car bonnet,
But his life the First World War took.

Because of the fact that Lord Byron
Synonymised ‘female’ and ‘siren’,
Thoughts of craftswomen, draughtswomen,
Scotswomen, yachtswomen
Did his each waking minute environ.

People asked of the poet John Dryden,
‘To the lyric, your range, won’t you widen?’
Said the poet, enraged,
‘Can’t you see I’m engaged
In translating the myth of Poseidon!’

The poet named Sam Taylor Coleridge
Had marital woes. I’ll the whole abridge:
He explained, ‘On my life,
Making love to my wife
Is like trying to coax and cajole a fridge.’

The scholar and poet named Gray
Guessed at Peterhouse, Cambridge he’d stay,
But to Pembroke upped sticks
In 1756
When rowdy undergrads drove him away.

A poet by name Robert Herrick
Went to Dartmoor to work as a cleric.
Every poem he wrote
Went in one book of note,
So don’t you dare call it generic.

There once was a poet called Marlowe
From Canterbury, nowhere near Harlow.
He was quite the big noise,
Loved tobacco and boys,
Like the Robbie to Shakespeare’s Gaz Barlow.

The poet-historian Milton
Described battles in Wiltshire, near Wilton.
He may as well have not written
His History of Britain,
But his poetry’s aged like fine Stilton.

A four-foot-six Catholic named Pope
In town couldn’t not interlope.
So he left to make grottos
And countless bon mottos
On what springs eternal, viz. hope.

Volume Two of The Poems of Shelley
Features cover art by Botticelli.
Bysshe’s corpora encased
By Italia, birthplace
Of Venus and tagliatelle.

There once was a poet called Spenser
Who’d have no doubt got into Mensa.
Dedications umpteen
He inscribed to the Queen,
And so never ran foul of the censor.

The poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
A notable Twickenham denizen,
Wrote of stag, hind and roe,
And the ‘lily-white doe’,
But never the subject of venison.