Poetry Friday: A Few Clerihews

Clerihew: A type of light, humorous biographical four-line poem in rhyming style AABB. The Clerihew was named after its inventor, Edmund Clerihew Bentley (also, one of G.K. Chesterton’s close friends). Clerihews start with the name of a famous person, who is then “put in an absurd light”.

A few Clerihews below:

After dinner, Erasmus
Told Colet not to be “blas’mous”
Which Colet, with some heat
Requested him to repeat.

The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes:
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”