Edward Lear, born May, 1812

Edward Lear

W. Holman Hunt

Walker Art Gallery

Liverpool

At the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, after a month of a poem-a-day, we are relaxing a bit and letting our minds drift toward the style of Edward Lear, born more than 200 years ago, whose nonsense still makes us laugh.

Of course, you know I am staid and stuffy and oh-so-serious, and simply can't imagine nonsense, never mind write it, but for the sake of the other Real Toads, I will give it my best shot.

Almost everyone knows Edward Lear's most famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, which has been a favourite of mine since early childhood. But how many know he was an artist and an illustrator as well? It's as if someone existed, two hundred years ago, who was an amalgam of my dad, my brothers, and me. Mom, Dad, Clint and I always enjoyed this kind of do-it-yourself entertainment when Clint and I were young.

My favourite lines from that poem are:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

    They danced by the light of the moon,

          The moon,

          The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

My Edward Lear(ish) poem contains, however, no honey, nor even no money (wrapped up in a five-pound note), and is not based at all on The Owl and the Pussycat.

 

an old lady tried for a beard

after reading a book by Ed Lear

she said, “I have heared

that if I have a  beard,

with wildlife my beard will be smeared.”

she started with hair she adhered

with glue to her face as she peered

into a mir-

ror quite near

for her eyesight wasn't too clear

said hair she had just commandeered

from the side of her head, near her ear

and hoped, it appeared

that a newly-grown beard

to the false one would simply cohere

but the new beard, it didn’t appear,

although the old girl persevered

for nearly a year

as her family jeered

From the painting
"The bearded woman"
by Jusepe de Ribera.Prado Museum,
Madrid, Spain.Public domain.

that it wasn't bioengineered.

Lear's much shorter version of this ditty can be found on the Real Toads page.