Relearning Lear, for his birthday's here

Edward Lear, 12 May 1812
to 29 January 1888)

Madeleine Begun Kane at her Limerick-Off Monday, has reminded us  of Edward Lear, the founding father of the Limerick, with whom we dealt earlier this month at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.
The man who invented the limerick, and who lived with it many years thereafter, is entitled to be recognized more than once, isn't he? After all, Madeleine says May 12 is his date of birth. Well, then, the least we can do, is besmirch his memory with yet another gimicky limericky.*

*Did you notice the word limericky, with the addition of a space,

becomes the soda Lime Ricky?

Life is just full of surprises, if only we keep our eyes and ears open. I'm sure Edward Lear believed that, or he would have refused to write the first limerick, or else he'd have let it die a natural death some years ago.

One day I was trying to buff

a limerick that was too rough

if Edward Lear

only were here

he’d help me get it up to snuff.

  

Now, Mr. Lear, I sorely fear

my limerick is very near

to awful, my friend,

and it won’t amend

without help from you, Mr. Lear.

Lear's self-description in verse, How Pleasant to know Mr. Lear, ends with this reference to his own mortality:

He reads but he cannot speak Spanish, 

He cannot abide ginger-beer;

Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish, 

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

Five of Lear's limericks from the Book of Nonsense, in the 1946 Italian translation by Carlo Izzo, were set to music for choir a cappella by Goffredo Petrassi in 1952.