The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

“It Was a Lover and His Lass” by William Shakespeare (w. 1599; p. 1623)

Taken from Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, this song contains many elements which would come to characterize nonsense verse. The charming pastoral song, which celebrates love in springtime, contains nonsensical but highly musical phrases like “hey nonino” and “hey ding a ding.” It shows how nonsense verse originates from joyous poetry meant to be spoken aloud and sung.

“There Was an Old Man With a Beard” by Edward Lear (1846)

This famous limerick is taken from A Book of Nonsense and is a fine example of Lear’s humor and playfulness, as well as his poetic range. Like in most of Lear’s limericks, the first and last lines end with the same word, in this case “beard.” The five-line form is formatted in four lines, with the third line containing a caesura or a mid-line break.

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll (1871)

Published in the same year as Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” Carroll’s poem is a classic of Victorian’s nonsense verse. “Jabberwocky” is a highly inventive poem, consisting of mostly made-up but memorable words like “frumious” (Line 8), “galumphing” (Line 20), and “mimsy” (Line 27). Through the original use of language in the poem, Carroll pushes the boundaries of realism and questions the idea of literature as necessarily meaningful and instructive.

“The Python” by Ogden Nash (1972)

Published a century after Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” American poet Nash’s work contains a similar delight in absurdity. Nash, widely considered a contemporary master of light verse, uses bizarre situations, verbal puns, and plot twists to enliven his poems. In 1968, Nash was commissioned to complete Lear’s last unfinished poem, “The Scroobious Pip.”