The tender infant, meek and mild,
Fell down upon the stone;
The nurse took up the squealing child,
But still the child squealed on.
The Doctor is also responsible for
If a man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he would rather
Have a turnip than a father.
And indeed, among our best writers there are few who have not dropped into nonsense or semi-nonsense at one time or another.
A familiar bit of nonsense prose is by S. Foote, and it is said that
Charles Macklin used to recite it with great gusto:
"She went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make
an apple-pie, and at the same time a great she-bear coming
up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What, no
soap?' so he died. She imprudently married the barber,
and there were present the Pickaninnies, the Joblilies, the
Gayrulies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself with the little
round button on top, and they all fell to playing
catch-as-catch-can
till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their
boots."
[Transcriber's note: The above paragraph is not an excerpt from a longer work, but is complete as it stands.]
An old nonsense verse attributed to an Oxford student, is the well known:
A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch
Considering how to run.
So far as we know, Kipling has never printed anything which can be called nonsense verse, but it is doubtless only a question of time when that branch shall be added to his versatility. His "Just So" stories are capital nonsense prose, and the following rhyme proves him guilty of at least one Limerick: