Steve

“Examples abound: one final one. On the copyright page of his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm, Max found the imprint

London: JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head
New York: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Beneath it, he wrote in pen:

This plain announcement, nicely read.
Iambically runs.

The effortless a-b-a-b rhyming, the balance of "plain" and "nicely," the need for nicety in pronouncing "Iambically" to scan - this is quintessential light verse, a twitting of the starkest prose into perfect form, a marriage of earth with light, and quite magical. Indeed, were I a high priest of literature, I would have this quatrain made into an amulet and wear it about my neck, for luck.

----John Updike, writing about the poetry of Max Beerbohm”
― John Updike, Assorted Prose

“It is as though the moon changed every thing -
Myself and all that I can hear and see;
For when the heavy body has grown weak,
There is nothing that can tether the wild mind
That, being moonstruck and fantastical,
Goes where it fancies.


From The King's Threshold”
― William Butler Yeats

“Tracy stood up and found that the room was swaying around him in a manner that would have been more disconcerting if it had been less familiar.”
― Fredric Brown

“Higgledy-piggledy,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
High over Jutland flew
In from the East.
'Well,' quipped a Minister
Plenipotentiary,
'Something is Groton in
Denmark, at least.”
― Anthony Hecht, Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, With a New Epilogue