Epigram

[sofia82]

Reading about epigram and some of this type, it seems interesting to me and fun if I start a thread on Epigram.

Epigram is "as a rule a short, witty statement in verse or prose which may be complimentary satiric or aphoristic." Coleridge defined it as:

A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Epigram flourished in the England in the late 16th and 17th centuries by Jonson, Donne, Herrick. Other poets written in this form from other periods are

Matthew Prior
Alexander Pope
Lady Mary Wortley Montague
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Walter Savage Landor
Boileau
Voltaire
Lessing
Goethe
Schiller
R. W. Emerson
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Ezra Pound
Ogden Nash

And here are some examples:

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest — and so am I.
John Dryden

God bless the King -- I mean the Faith's defender!
God Bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender!
But who pretender is or who is king --
God bless us all! that's quite another thing.
John Byrom

We think our fathers fools, so wise we gro%
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
Pope, Essay on Critisim

I am His Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Pope

[JBI]

Nietzsche wrote some decent ones, as did Samuel Johnson.

[sofia82]

Swans sing before they die-- 'twere no bad thing
should certain people die before they sing!
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[sofia82]

To Fool, Or Knave

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike:
One doth not stroke me, not the other strike.

---Ben Jonson

[Dori]

Coward
Bravery runs in my family.
~A. R. Ammons

Epitaph on a Waiter
By and by
God caught his eye.
~David McCord

Theology
There is a heaven, for ever, day by day,
The upward longing of my soul doth tell me so.
There is a hell, I'm quite as sure; for pray,
If there were not, where would my neighbors go?
~Paul Laurence Dunbar


oh, and I think this might be one:

A pretty boy - with an auctioneer
Bargaining there, I fancy.
~Catullus

[sofia82]

Poets aren't very useful
Because they aren't consumeful or produceful.
--Ogden Nash

[sofia82]

[B]
Theology
There is a heaven, for ever, day by day,
The upward longing of my soul doth tell me so.
There is a hell, I'm quite as sure; for pray,
If there were not, where would my neighbors go?
~Paul Laurence Dunbar

This is great.

[Pecksie]

Here lies our sovereign lord the king,
whose word no man relied on -
who never said a foolish thing
and never did a wise one.
- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, "On Charles II"