Elizabeth Horrocks: Incentive
To get her to study her Chaucer,
The teacher did not have to force her:
For though Chaucer starts fine,
He’s soon in decline,
And gets coarser . . . and coarser . . . and coarser
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Jerome Betts: Exit Macbeth In Five Lines
(From the New Limerick Shakespeare)
A curse on those weird bearded witches!
My God! Weren’t they foul lying bitches!
Birnam Wood, it is plain,
Has reached Dunsinane
And MacDuff left his dam needing stitches!
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Charles Hadfield: A Ridge Too Far
King Harold, with Tostig’s Danes harrowed,
Fought the French, but was fatally arrowed,
So the Normans took over
From Land’s End to Dover
And that’s how the Channel was narrowed.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
L. A. Mereoie: William Makes Waste
With Angleterre only half mastered
Though the land with his castles was plastered
He left Yorkshire's earth scorched
And its villages torched
Living up to his label, the B*st*rd.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Martin Parker: New Forest Note
The red-visaged king shot by Tyrrell
Who maybe had thought him a squirrel
Would not have thus died
If he'd faced a long ride
And hunted for game in the Wirral.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Brian S. Lee: 1090 In Rouen
Henry Beauclerc at fighting excelled,
So when Conan ‒ base bourgeois! ‒ rebelled,
With a wrestler’s throw
He was from his chateau
By the future King Henry propelled.
