Seven Academic Graffiti

My first name, Wystan,

Rhymes with Tristan,

But -- O dear! -- I do hope

I'm not quite such a dope.

Henry Adams

Was mortally afraid of Madams:

In a disorderly house

He sat quiet as a mouse.

St Thomas Aquinas

Always regarded wine as

A medicinal juice

That helped him to deduce.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Was a master of his Fach:

Nothing could be more kluge

Than his Kunst der Fuge.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Could never walk through meadows

Without getting the glooms

And thinking of tombs.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Believed it proven

That, for mortal dust,

What must be, must.

Good Queen Bess

Couldn't have liked it less,

When Burghley and Cecil

Drank out of the same vessel.

William Blake

Found Newton hard to take,

And was not enormously taken

With Francis Bacon.

Said Robert Bridges,

When badly bitten by midges:

"They're only doing their duty

As a testament to my beauty."

Robert Browning

Immediately stopped frowning

And started to blush,

When fawned on by Flush.

Martin Buber

Never said "Thou" to a tuber:

Despite his creed,

He did not feel the need.

Lord Byron

Once succumbed to a Siren:

His flesh was weak,

Hers Greek.

Among the prosodists, Bysshe

Was the syllable-counting old sissy,

Guest

The accentual pest.

When Arthur Hugh Clough

Was jilted by a piece of fluff,

He sighed "Quel dommage!",

And wrote Amours de Voyage.

Dante

Was utterly enchanté

When Beatrice cried in tones that were peachy:

Noi siamo amici.

Hugh De Vries

During a visit to Greece

Composed a pastoral poem,

Xylem & Phloem.

Charles Dickens

Could find nothing to say to chickens,

But gossipping with rabbits

Became one of his habits.

Desiderius Erasmus

Always avoided chiasmus,

But grew addicted as time wore on

To oxymoron.

Fulke Greville

Wrote beautifully at sea level:

With each rising contour his verse

Got progressively worse.

The Geheimrat in Goethe

Made him all the curter

With Leute who were leery

Of his Color Theory.

Sir Rider Haggard,

Was completly staggered

When his bride-to-be

Announced "I AM SHE!"

Georg Friedrich Händel

Was highly respected in Kendal:

It was George Frederick Handel

Who caused all the scandal.

Thomas Hardy

Was never tardy

When summoned to fulfill

The Immanent Will.

Joseph Haydn

Never read Dryden

Nor did John Dryden

Ever hear Haydn.

No one could ever inveigle

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Into offering the slightest apology

For his Phenomenology.

George Herbert

Once tried ordering sherbet

On Salisbury Plain:

He ordered in vain.

Robert Herrick

Certainly did not write Eric:

So far

As we know, it was Dean Farrar.

Henry James

Abhorred the word Dames,

And always wrote "Mommas"

With inverted commas.

When the young Kant

Was told to kiss his aunt,

He obeyed the Categorical Must,

But only just.

Søren Kierkegaard

Tried awfully hard

To take The Leap

But fell in a heap.

Karl Kraus

Always had some grouse:

Among his bête noires

Were Viennese choirs.

Archbishop Laud

Was High, not Broad:

He could never descend

To celebrating the North End.

Edward Lear

Was haunted by a fear

While travelling in Albania

Of contracting kleptomania.

Joseph Lister,

According to his sister,

Was not an alcoholic:

His vice was carbolic.

Mr Robert Liston

Used the saw like a piston:

He was that elated

When he amputated.

Luther & Zwingli

Should be treated singly:

L hated the Peasants,

Z the Real Presence.

Mallarmé

Had too much to say:

He could never quite

Leave the paper white.

Mary, Queen of Scots,

Could tie the most complicated knots,

But she couldn't bake

The simplest cake.

Queen Mary (The Bloody)

Had an understudy

Who was a Prot:

She was not.

When Karl Marx

Found the phrase "financial sharks,"

He sang a Te Deum

In the British Museum.

John Milton

Never stayed in a Hilton

Hotel,

Which was just as well.

William Henry Monk

Lived in a perpetual blue funk

Of being taken on hikes

By John Bacchus Dykes.

Thomas Moore

Caused a furore

Every time he bellowed his

Irish Melodies.

Cardinal Newman

Was being only human

When he dreamed of panning

The latest tract by Cardinal Manning.

Nietzsche

Had the habit as a teacher

Of cracking his joints

To emphasize his points.

Oxbridge philosophers, to be cursory,

Are products of a middle-class nursery:

Their arguments are anent

What Nanny really meant.

Louis Pasteur,

So his colleagues aver,

Lived on excellent terms

With most of his germs.

Alexander Pope

Never gave up hope

Of finding a motto

To affix to his Grotto.

Christina Rossetti

Thought it rather petty,

When her brother, D.G.,

Put laudanum in her tea.

When Sir Walter Scott

Made a blot,

He stamped with rage

And started a new page.

"Ma foi!", exclaimed Stendhal,

"Ce Scarpia n'est pas si mal,

But he's no Count Mosca,

Unluckily for Tosca."

Adalbert Stifter

Was no weight-lifter:

He would hire old lags

To carry his bags.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Wept into his daiquiri,

When he heard St John's Wood

Thought he was no good.

Thomas the Rhymer

Was probably a social climber:

He should have known Fairy Queens

Were beyond his means.

Thomas Traherne

Could always discern

The Angel in boys,

Even when they made a noise.

Paul Valéry

Earned a meagre salary,

Walking through the Bois,

Observing his Moi.

Good Queen Victoria

In a fit of euphoria

Commanded Disraeli

To blow up the Old Bailey.

James Watt

Was the hard-boiled kind of Scot:

He thought any dream

Sheer waste of steam.

Oscar Wilde

Was greatly beguiled,

When into the Café Royal walked Boise

Wearing a tea-cosy.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Never went on a diet,

Unlike the Earl of Surrey,

Who ate nothing but curry.

Whenever Xantippe

Wasn't feeling too chippy,

She would bawl at Socrates:

"Why aren't you Hippocrates?"

T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss

When clubwomen bustle across

At literary teas,

Crying:-- "What, if you please,

Did you mean by The Mill on the Floss?"

To get the Last Poems of Yeats,

You need not mug up on dates;

All a reader requires

Is some knowledge of gyres

And the sort of people he hates.