What the Bunny Don't Know

And the Hen Won't Tell

Here, for our Easter delectation, is a perfect limerick:

Said a great congregational preacher

To a hen, "You're a beautiful creature."

And the hen, just for that,

Laid an egg in his hat,

And thus did the Hen reward Beecher.

Not composed by me, I'm sorry to say, but by the late Oliver Herford (1863-1935), an Anglo-American humorist and illustrator, most of whose work is less charming today than it evidently was a hundred years ago (in another connection he described an eggshell as "the fragile, calcarous container . . . of an unborn domestic fowl"). But that's a pippen of a limerick. Three different spellings of the exact principal rhyme. All the feet smooth anapests except one, and that one ("And thus") an unobtrusive but nicely placed iamb. Furthermore, it is always good to work the word hat into a verse. (Stephen Sondheim, if I'm not mistaken, speaks of this.) Preacher Beecher of course is Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) the American religious leader, anti-slavery advocate, champion of Charles Darwin and (it's hard to get everything right) scandalous adulterer who at one time was called the most famous man in America. He was a funny-looking dude, except in his statue, in Brooklyn, but not one to hang back from the ladies. The perfect foil for a perky oviparess, and vice-versa.

I can’t touch that limerick, but I did compose this, “A Song to Eggs”: