VERSES

Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink.
Thy will be drunk, I will be drunk,
at home as it is in the pub.
Give us this day our foamy head,
and forgive us our spillage's
As we forgive those who spill upon us.
Lead us not into incarceration,
But deliver us from hangover.
For thine is the Beer, and the Bitter, and the Lager.
BARMEN
H.L.Mencken

I have no pain, dear mother, now,
but Oh! I am so dry.
Connect me to a brewery
and leave me there to die.
Anon

(This quatrain is imagined as the caption under a picture
of a rugged-looking cowboy seated upon a bale of hay.)

Carnation Milk is the best in the land;
Here I sit with a can in my hand --
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.
The Oxford Book of American Light Verse (William Harmond)

I love my Kellog's All-Bran
It fills me with elation;
It's quick and easy and ensures
Diurnal defecation.
New Statesman literary competition

Salman Rushdie
Born on Sunday
Wrote on Monday
Condemned by the Khomenei
Banned on Wednesday
Riots on Thursday
Burned on Friday.
And that was the end of Salman Rushdie.
Richard Barton

Little Willie, full of glee,
Put radium on Grandma's tea.

Now he thinks it quite a lark
To see her glowing in the dark.

He coded in Fortran like hell,
wrote programs with whistle and bell.
Now feels that this tool
has made him a fool
but cannot get rid of its spell.

Thomas, an Air Marshal's son
Loved to push the neighbours' bells;
Laughingly away he'd run
Heedless of their angry yells.

Tom, when visiting H.Q.
Found a red one labelled "GO.
WARNING" (underlined in blue)
"Do not press till Ike says so".

St. Peter with a startled look
Drew a line and closed the Book.
"See", he said, "what comes of boys
Playing with their father's toys."
A.W.Clarke, New Statesman competition 1958.

The ant has made himself illustrious
through constant industry industrious.
So what!
Would you be calm and placid
if you were full of formic acid?
Ogden Nash

Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy.
He lived in the odium
of having discovered Sodium.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
The evening can be awfully jolly.
Anon. parody of Goldsmith

Rupert Murdoch, with glee, shouted "What
a lot of newspapers I've got!
I've just got to get
the 'Beekeeper's Gazette'
and 'War Cry', and I've got the lot!"