Nashian

I have a note file in which I keep examples that I run across of particularly clever or funny rhymes.

The book I’m currently reading from my unread-books shelf is Ogden Nash’s 1938 I’m a Stranger Here Myself, and I thought for a moment that I was going to copy some rhymes from it into my file, but then realized that if I started in on doing that I would be at it until the End Times,

or that I would have to copy the entire book into it.

At some future point I may transcribe and post several of my very favorites, but for now I’ll just give one example, because at the moment the rhymes are going by in one fast stream, so trying to record them in my file would be like trying to copy an entire brook into it.

And you drink water, water, water, and the only other ingredient in it is sometimes soda and sometimes aspirin,

And when your helpmeet approaches to help, you are very grateful but you are afraid of giving her what you have got, and a grateful embrace is the last thing you can claspirin

—from “A Ride on the Bronxial Local”

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