Limerick - Examples and Definition of Limerick

Definition of Limerick
Limerick is a comedian verse, containing five anapestic (unstressed/unstressed/stressed) traces, in which the first, second, and 5th traces are longer, rhyme together, and comply with 3 metrical feet. The third and fourth traces rhyme together, are shorter, and comply with two metrical toes. However, sometimes it may vary, and amphibrachic (unstressed/stressed/unstressed) shape can update anapestic. In fact, it's miles a bawdy, humorous, or nonsensical verse written in the form of five anapests, with an aabba rhyme scheme. Since it has a unique shape and layout, it's far known as fixed or closed form of poetry.

Limerick and Villanelle
Though each of these are varieties of poem having constant structures, both are unique in their forms. Villanelle consists of 19 traces with refraining rhyming sounds appearing within the first and the 1/3 strains, at the same time as the very last quatrain has a remaining couplet. A limerick has 5 traces, having anapestic form with the first, second, and 5th lines rhyming together, however the third and fourth strains are distinctive and rhyme together.

Examples of limerick in Literature
We can locate the use of limericks in eighteenth century verse. They are associated with Edward Lear, who first posted this verse shape in his e book A Book of Nonsense inside the yr 1846. Later, this form became popular, and plenty of poets, including Alfred Lord Tennyson, Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ogden Nash, H. G. Wells, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Lewis Carroll, tried their hands on this shape of poetry. Here we have a few examples of limerick from literature:

Example #1: To Miss Vera Beringer (By Lewis Carroll)
“There turned into a young woman of station
‘I love guy’ became her sole exclamation;
But when guys cried: ‘You flatter,’
She replied, ‘Oh! No matter
Isle of Man is the proper explanation.'”

This limerick contains 5 strains with a rhyme scheme of aabba. Here we will note the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme together, with three ft; whereas the 0.33 and fourth strains incorporate feet and rhyme together.

Example #2: There was an Old Man with a Beard (By Edward Lear)
“There become an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, ‘It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all constructed their nests in my beard!”

Edward Lear became taken into consideration to be the father of limericks. This is one in all the very good examples of limerick poems, following its typical layout with the first, second, and 5th strains rhyming together, and longer in length; at the same time as the closing two are shorter, and deliver a quicker read. Lear has stated this shape as nonsense.

Example #3: There changed into a small boy of Quebec (By Rudyard Kipling)
“There became a small boy of Quebec
Who turned into buried in snow to his neck
When they said, ‘Are you friz?’
He replied, ‘Yes, I is —
But we don’t call this bloodless in Quebec.'”

Notice Kipling has penned a good limerick with inappropriate zaniness and weirdness. The first 4 lines appearance funny, at the same time as the final line creates a curious and special mood on this poem.

Example #4: Othello (By William Shakespeare)
“And permit me the canakin clink, clink;
And let me the canakin clink
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s however a span;
Why, then, allow a soldier drink.”

It is quite interesting that the earliest written limericks have been connected with ingesting. We can guess that humans would have drinks and sang bawdy, humorous songs or poems. Similarly, William Shakespeare has hired this shape in a drinking music of Stephano to create nonsensical and funny effects.

Example #5: A Man Hired with the aid of John Smith & Co (By Mark Twain)
“A man hired by means of John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he’d tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dust near his door
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.”

As we know, Mark Twain is also famous for writing limericks. Here, he has used a funny and whimsical limerick poem, with a concluding punch line.

Function of Limerick
Poets use limericks as literary or poetic forms to deliver and create funny and humorous images. The cause of the usage of this form is to replace ordinary expression with unusual alternative to explicit emotion and a specific mood by adding eccentricity and weirdness. We can discover its utilization in literature to explain humor or mild concern matter, as the first four traces create a joke, and it ends on a punch line. It is also used regularly in nursery rhymes to make kids love reading.