Eskimo Sharkie said:
dimitri said:
what does extinction rhyme with in that?
It doesn't have to.
The definition of a limerick is:
Limerick:
a fixed verse form appearing first in The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women (1820), popularized by Edward Lear, and rhyming aabba, where a-lines have five feet and the b-lines three feet, and where the first and last lines end with the same word
(a practice dropped in the 20th century). A limerick has been defined as "A comic poem consisting of one couplet of accentual Poulter's Measure with fixed (internal) rhyme: 3aa2bb3a" (Malof, 204). Lear fused the third and fourth lines into a single line with internal rhyme. See anonymous examples or ones authored by such as Gelett Burgess and A. H. Reginald Buller.
And that is a beauty Dean!
I beg to differ Eskimo
The limerick is THE most structured of all the poems and has several literary "rules" that should be followed. One is that it MUST rhyme in lines 1,2 and 5 and in lines 3 and 4
PART ONE
BASIC RULES AND DEFINITIONS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is a simplified descripition of what constitutes a limerick. Reference to "Lure" is Lure of the Limerick. See outlink page for reference.
Rhyme Scheme
Limerick must have five lines with aabba rhyme scheme. This much is well known.
Rhythm
The beat must be anapestic (weak, weak, strong) with three feet in lines 1, 2, and 5 and 2 feet in lines 3 and 4. This will be explained further below. However the following exceptions are allowed:
The first foot of an line may have only one weak beat in front of the strong beat.
Trailing weak beats that continue the rhyme are allowed at the end of the each line. Naturally these sounds must be identical over rhyming lines.
The following covers most cases, where S equals a strong beat, w indicates a weak beat, and the brackets indicate that the beat is optional. Note that on the same line, different strong beats are always separated by exactly two weak beats. The options apply only to the leading and trailing beats.
Lines 1,2,5: w [w] S w w S w w S [w] [w] (8 sylables only)
Lines 3,4: w [w] S w w S [w] [w] (5 sylables only)
Restriction on Rhyming Beats.
The last strong beats in the lines must rhyme (1,2,5 and 3,4) and the any weak beats at the end must match and must have the same sound over rhyming lines. Limericks with two weak beats at the end are less common than those with one or none. In poetry books, single beat rhymes are called masculine rhymes; two-beat rhymes are called feminine rhymes. A combination of wwS is called an anapest; a combination wS is called an iamb.
Beginning weak beats
Note that each line can start with either one or two weak beats. Various writers have proposed special restrictions (such as requiring just one weak beat at the start of lines one and two, or requiring matching the initial number of weak beats over certain lines), but all such restrictions fail the empirical test of describing what good anthologies and recognized masters have produced.
Even some apparent patterns such as one weak beat for the first foot of line one is caused mainly by the two formulas, "There was a . . . ," and "There once was a . . ." By the way, readers should note that the following formulation is wrong:
There once was a young lady . . .
The reason is that "once" takes a strong beat as does the first syllable of "lady" and there are three weak beats in between. This is taboo. So basically, your practice should be:
1. If you want an adjective, use something like, "There was a young lady . . ."
2. If you wish to omit the adjective, then use something like, "There once was a lady . . ."
Sleep now people........................................
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
