A Terrible Infant -- Frederick Locker-Lampson

(Poem #1870) A Terrible Infant I recollect a nurse called Ann, Who carried me about the grass, And one fine day a fine young man Came up, and kissed the pretty lass: She did not make the least objection! Thinks I, "Aha! When I can talk I'll tell Mamma" - And that's my earliest recollection. -- Frederick Locker-Lampson

A fun little piece to brighten up a dull moment - again, the humour is
mostly in the tone of voice, coupled with a perfect sense of timing. I don't
think this would have been nearly as good were it either longer or shorter.

Locker-Lampson (who I discovered when leafing through Burton Stevenson's
"Home Book of Verse" on Gutenberg) is a rather "odd" poet - odd in that I
can seldom quite decide whether I like any given poem of his. He has written
some very nice stuff ("polished and witty", as the anonymous biographer ove
at Wikipedia described it), but his longer poems seem to stagger back
and forth across the fine line between fluent and mechanical; there is
always the temptation to skim, counterbalanced by the feeling that I'll miss
some passing gem if I do.  Today's poem is definitely a winner, though -
short, crisp and funny, with not a word or a beat out of place.

martin

[Links]

Biography:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Locker-Lampson

Home Book of Verse:
  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2619
  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2620
  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2621
  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2622