They are written in iambic tetrameter which is kept from singsongness by the action of the dialogue. The characters seldom end their speeches at the end of the line but rather in the middle, and the line is filled out by the first words of the next speaker.
These little play fragments, built in the form of a delicate comedy, are not long enough to exhaust either writer or reader and are even to be met with now and then in our modern magazines. Their value for the verse maker lies in the premium which they put upon ease and naturalness of expression, though in addition they present a novel exercise to the student who is tired of writing his narratives in conventional verse. The “Proverbs” are suggested not as models to copy absolutely but rather as the base of variations which the verse maker may devise to suit his theme.
Nonsense Verse
Nonsense verse in its present development is a fairly modern growth. It began with the limerick which first reached the public under the kindly patronage of Mother Goose:
“There was an old man of Bombay,
Who pulled at a pipe made of clay,
But a long-legged snipe
Flew away with the pipe
Which vexed that old man of Bombay.”
With this as a beginning the limerick has spread far and wide. It has secured a place in modern nonsense verse corresponding to that of the sonnet in more serious efforts. There are even limerick fiends who pride themselves on their writing of limericks and others whose collections of the form total up in the thousands.
It is very seldom that one sees a limerick now with the first and last lines identical. As a rule the last line differs from the first and ends in a new rhyme. The following taken from Life represents the apotheosis of the limerick:
“A German from over the Rhine
When asked at what hour he would dine,
Replied, ‘At Five, Seven,
Eight, Ten and Eleven,
Four, Six and a Quarter to Nine!’”
Edward Lear, an English writer, began the popularization of the limerick in his nonsense books about 1850 and since his time it has been experimented with by many of the cleverest writers now before the public.
But nonsense verse is not confined to this one form. Passing from the work of Lear we come to Lewis Carroll’s verse in “Alice in Wonderland.” Nothing of its kind better than “Jabberwocky” has ever been written, and it would be a bold verse maker who would try to improve on “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” or any of the other “Alice poems.”