Children's Nonsense Poem
Toy Horses (the nearest to Muddlehorses)
A vibrant and varied selection of some of the finest nonsense verse ever written!
Quentin Blake is one of the best loved of children's illustrators. In this brilliant book he has selected and illustrated his favourite comic verse, making it pure entertainment for nonsense-lovers of all ages.
Nonsense Poem
If I were a Muddlehorse
I
If
I were a Muddlehorse
With a black mane,
I'd be running on a race
course
With horses from Spain,
And all those Spanish horses
Would
be running like the wind;
But you cannot beat a Muddlehorse
And I
left them all behind.
II
Muddlehorses come in sizes
Six to
eleven,
The smallest ones win all the prizes
They run sixty
miles in seven
(Minutes, of course.) A Muddlehorse
Can
live on grass, but most-
Ly he likes cabbages and candy-floss
And
Muddle-made toast.
III
Muddlehorses race on the sea;
In
the forests of Germany
They are found
Meditating on the nature of
movement underground.
© Tan Pratonix
This is what you would call a fun poem. Funny poems (or nonsense verses) are humorous, absurd and whimsical poems, apparently having no meaning and yet making a lot of sense in their own way.
An Explanation
After some years I get this notice from Hubpages saying: "Your Hub is currently published. However, it has a large number of Amazon or eBay products listed in comparison to the amount of text. Our policy has changed to require 100 words of original text for every product featured in a Hub. If you edit this Hub without bringing it into compliance with our new policy, it may be moderated as overly promotional."
I put up the pics, just to illustrate my poem. Maybe I ought to have trimmed them, and just got them added as my own pics. But being honest, I didn't do that. Now, according to Hubpages I am 'promoting' Amazon and eBay products! How on earth could I do that?
I notice there are four pictures put up to illustrate my poem, so I have to write 400 words (original stuff) to compensate. Hmmm.... Do I have to explain why I wrote this poem? Do I have to explain why I called this poem "Muddlehorses"? Do people understand the meaning of the word 'whimsical'? Is Hubpages slowly getting stultified and petrified with technical restrictions?
It is tragic that genuine literature has to be subjected to the 'whims and fancies' of brains that are largely unimaginative and unpoetic. I know that this Explanation does not 'explain' anything about the poem. But I am not going to get the poem down to dull, prosaic levels by giving you the background behind it. Let the poem remain a mystery. (Just as lots of Lear's poems were!)
Pratonix
Comments
Sweet and the muddlehorses remind me of a stuffed gingham giraffe my mother made for me when I had my appendix out at age 11. But a lot of the rhyme doesn't or is a big stretch; and that's disturbing when the main apparent reason for the words' selection seems for that purpose.
I honestly think you've written much better poetry than this one. But if it was one of your teenaage years' poems, it's ok. You asked my opinion, though. So I must either give it or say nothing. I do like your style overall.
- Author
It was written in my teens. There are three sections in the poem and each has a different rhythm. The first section has a regular beat, the second has a slight variation, and the third is 'off-beat'. The rhyming also changes in the last section.