an actual marine monster
is one of the things
to do before I die
I wonster."
Ogden Nash – Dragons Are
Too Seldom Seen
She was trig and trimly
sparred,
As fine as a brig might be,
Yet she was evil-starred,
For there crossed her bows at
night,
In a spindrift smother of
white,
The serpent of the sea.
The lookout saw the thing,
Yet, he knew not what he saw-
Ominous, soul-stirring,
But he gave it a long-drawn
hail,
“Ahoy! Is that a sail?”
This with a touch of awe.
A sail, my man? Not so!
Rather a shape of dread:
Eyes that burn and glow,
Twin inhuman fires-
Carnivorous desires-
Set in a scaly head.
And a body long and lithe,
Monstrous, jaws agape,
That seem to oscillate, writhe;
Spewed from the uttermost
caves
Of the deep, with its yawning
graves,
A murk incredible shape.
Nay she will never come back
To the watchful hearts that
yearn,
For a portent has crossed her
track;
She will lie erelong, that ship,
Warped to an oozy slip
In the Port of No-Return!
Clinton Scollard- “The Wits’
Weekly” contest winner The
Saturday Review of Literature
- October 12, 1929
The sea-serpent, in languor
curved
About a rock, the world observed,
How all the beasts and birds
And fishes too, from near and far
Were pigeon-holed by genera
And tagged with Latin words.
“They lose thereby, each one,”
said he,
“His individuality
And influence to boot
The others mark his spot or stripe,
Ignore the beast but not the type
And pitch their praise to suit.”
So sailormen he shunned, save
such
As a double grog had drunk too
much
And had a mighty bun on.
“For these,” said he, “will ne’er
agree”
Some give me one head, some say
three,
And some that I have none on.
“They credit one with variation,
A virtue in intoxication
As excellent, as rare.”
And then he swore, while life was
his,
To be just sui generis,
A fearful oath to swear.
For still the world in anger raves
Not half so hard at cheats and
knaves,
Its anger all is turned
On harmless chaps whose end
and glory
Is not to fit a category:
This truth our hero learned.
In boat and plane and submarine
Bewhiskered pundits, students
keen
Pursued him day and night,
Inventing terms of barb’rous Latin
That Julius Caesar could not chat
in
Or Cicero recite.
At last, of food and sleep bereft-
No leisure more or refuge left-
Of long pursuit he tired,
And softly murm’ring e’er he died,
“Thank God, I die unclassified!”
Resignedly expired.
By Claudius Jones - “The Wits’
Weekly” contest entry
The Saturday Review of Literature
- October 12, 1929
by: J.R. Planché (1796-1880)
All bones but yours will rattle when I say
I'm the sea-serpent from America.
Mayhap you've heard that I've been round
the world;
I guess I'm round it now, Mister, twice
curled.
Of all the monsters through the deep that
splash,
I'm "number one" to all immortal smash.
When I lie down and would my length
unroll,
There ar'nt half room enough 'twixt pole
and pole.
In short, I grow so long that I've a notion
I must be measured soon for a new ocean.
- A Nonsense Anthology Carolyn Wells ed.
Charles Scribner’s Sons New York 1915
