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<E>
Epigrams
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★ Epigrams

Epigrams: see Poetry & Comedy & Humour & Limericks & Write & Epitaph & Joke & Literature & Irony & Satire

Dorothy Parker - esias - Lord Byron - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Ebenezer Elliott - John Byrom - Samuel Johnson - Paul Dehn - Ogden Nash - Anonymous/Authors Unknown - G K Chesterton - John Owen - Edmund Clerihew Bentley - Walter Savage Landor - Walter de la Mare - A E Housman - Benny Hill - Emily Dickinson - Samuel Wilberforce - Bob McCue - John Updike - A P Herbert - Robert Lowell - Wendy Cope - Thomas Hood - George Gamow - Desmond Skirrow - Harry Graham - Alexander Pope - John Wilmot - Hilaire Belloc - J R Pope - Gavin Ewart - George Carlin - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Langston Hughes - Tom Lehrer - James Thomson - Spitting Image TV - W S Gilbert - Muddy Waters - William Blake - W H Auden - Kenneth Grahame - Ronald Knox - Spike Milligan - Thomas Hood - Florence -               

 

 

 

Résumé:

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.  Dorothy Parker, Resume, 1937

 

 

If, with the literate, I am

Impelled to try an epigram,

I never seek to take the credit;

We all assume that Oscar said it.  Dorothy Parker, Life magazine 2nd June 1927

 

 

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Roumania.  Dorothy Parker, Comment

 

 

If I had a shiny gun

I could have a world of fun

Speeding bullets through the brains

Of the folks that cause me pains.  Dorothy Parker

 

 

By the time you say you’re his,

Shivering and sighing

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying –

Lady, make a note of this:

One of you is lying.  Dorothy Parker, Unfortunate Coincidence, 1937

 

 

If wild my breast and sore my pride,

I bask in dreams of suicide,

If cool my heart and high my head

I think, How Lucky Are The Dead.  Dorothy Parker

 

 

In youth, it was a way I had,

To do my best to please.

And change, with every passing lad

To suit his theories.

 

But now I know the things I know

And do the things I do,

And if you do not like me so,

To hell, my love, with you.  Dorothy Parker

 

 

I never see that prettiest thing –

A cherry bough gone white with Spring –

But what I think, How gay ’twould be

To hang me from a flowering tree.  Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well

 

 

If I didn’t care for fun and such,

I’d probably amount to much.

But I shall stay the way I am,

Because I do not give a damn.  Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

 

 

Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,

Painter or plumber or never-do-well,

Do me a favor and shut your face –

Poets alone should kiss and tell.  Dorothy Parker, The Collected Dorothy Parker   

 

 

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.  Dorothy Parker, Inventory 1937

 

 

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.  Dorothy Parker, New Item, 1937

 

 

Bud, bud, glorious bud

Nothing quite like it for stoning the blood.  esias, 2010

 

 

There was a time

I could have said

Wooder bin better

To stay in bed.

But now I say,

‘Let’s get up!’

Why?

Dunno.

Give up.  esias, Don’t, 1996

 

 

Hey diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle,

Gods up there,

The devils down there

And here am I.

Trapped.

In the middle.  esias, Life is a Steaming Pile of Donkey Doo-Doos, 1996 

 

 

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           z

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 z                                    esias, Waiting for a Lecture, 1997     

 

 

 

And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,

It seemed the mockery of hell to fold

The rottenness of eighty years in gold.  Lord Byron, re burial of George III

 

                                                

What is an Epigram?  A dwarfish whole,

Its body brevity, and wit its soul.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Epigram

 

 

What is a communist?  One who has yearnings

For equal division of unequal earnings;

Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing

To fork out his penny and pocket his shilling.  Ebenezer Elliott, Epigram 1850

 

 

Some say, that Signor Bononcini,

Compared to Handel’s a mere ninny;

Others aver, to him, that Handel

Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.

Strange!  That such high dispute should be

’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  John Byrom, re feuds between Handel & Bononcini, The London Journal 5th June 1725

 

 

God bless the king, I mean the faiths defender;

God bless – (no harm in blessing) – the pretender;

But who pretender is, and who is king,

God bless them all – thats quite another thing.  John Byrom, Extempore Intended to Allay the Violence of Party Spirit

 

 

Come all ye foreign strolling gentry,

Into Great Britain make your entry;

Abjure the Pope, and take the oaths,

And you shall have meat, drink, and clothes.  John Byrom, Four Epigrams on the Naturalization Bill (i)

 

 

If a man who turnip cries

Cry not when his father dies,

Is it not proof he’d rather

Have a turnip than his father?  Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, Epigram I

 

I put my hat upon my head

And walked into the Strand

And there I met another man

Whose hat was in his hand.   ibid.  Ballad ii

 

 

O nuclear wind, when wilt thou blow

That the small rain down can rain?

Christ, that my love were in my arms

And I had my arms again.  Paul Dehn

 

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