ABC Wednesday

The letter this week is the big, round O


O is for Ogden Nash

Frederic OGDEN Nash was born in Rye, New York on August 19th, 1902.

This is the stamp that the U.S. Postal services issued to honour him on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

He was a writer of light verse, par none.  Four of his books have nestled on my shelves for almost seventy years, - books that I brought to my marriage  and have smiled and chuckled over ever since.

He is the man who loved to rhyme.  He 'had a fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist, ...'   Some poets are successful at this, and some not, but Nash excelled!

It is taking me a long time to write this post because I turn page after page after page, unable to make up my mind which of his wonderful words I should write for you, smiling all the while.....

He had a penchant for small rhymes about animals and birds, but he also wrote longer humourous verses, some wry, some ironic, and some just plain funny.

Here is one entitled 'The Birds'

Puccini was Latin, and Wagner Teutonic,

And birds are incurably philharmonic.

Suburban yards and rural vistas

Are filled with avian Andrews Sisters.

The Skylark sings a roundelay,

The crow sings "The Road to Mandalay".

The nightingale sings a lullaby

and the sea gull sings a gullaby.

That's what shepherds listened to in Arcadia

Before somebody invented the radia.

and here is one,  a little poignant.

Kipling's Vermont

The summer like a rajah dies,

and every widowed tree

Kindles for Congregational eyes

An alien suttee.

about the Cuckoo he wrote

Cuckoos lead Bohemian lives,

They fail as husbands and as wives,

Therefore they cynically disparage

Everybody else's marriage.

and about The Tortoise

Come, crown my brows with leaves of myrtle

I know the tortoise is a turtle.

Come carve my name in stone immortal,

I know the turtoise is a tortle;

I know to my profound despair;

I bet on one to beat a hare.

I also know I'm now a pauper

Because of its tortley turtley torpor.

Well, I could go on and on. but instead I must advise you to go online and Google Ogden Nash so you can spend a delightful evening in his company, - or buy one of his great books from Amazon.

I leave you with a quote....

For more interesting takes on the letter O go here to Mrs. Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday.

P.S.  Ogden Nash was the author of the quote "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker"

and also, 'I often wonder which is mine.  Tolerance or a rubber spine"