Selected Poems of Edward Lear

by Edward Lear, George Herbert

This is a selection of poetry by the Victorian writer/illustrator, Edward Lear. Born in 1812, he was an accomplished painter, traveller and zoologist, and a friend of Lord Tennyson. Today, he is mainly remembered for his nonsense songs, such as "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo".

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.

Reviews

[J]

Cold are the crabs that crawl on yonder hills,
Colder the cucumbers that grow beneath,
And colder still the brazen chops that wreathe
The tedious gloom of philosophic pills!
For when the tardy film of nectar fills
The simple bowls of demons and of men,
There lurks the feeble mouse, the homely hen,
And there the porcupine with all her quills.
Yet much remains - to weave a solemn strain
That lingering sadly - slowly dies away,
Daily departing with departing day
A pea-green gamut on a distant plain
When wily walrusses in congresses meet -
Such such is life -

[Katie Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so much fun to read these poems as they are plainly silly and sometimes nonsense!