I just read this and, well, it's hilarious!

Very Like a Whale by Ogden Nash

One thing literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile
and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably was't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy
and thus hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one who cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our
philosophy there are a great many things,
but I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I will believe that this Assyrian was
actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big
red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof
woof?
Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to
say, at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of
Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no,
he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then
interpolate them,
With the result that when you mention the Old Testament
soldiers to people they say oh yes, they're the ones that a
lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by
poets, from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lillies and veal to venison.
How about the man who wrote,
her little feet stole in and out like mice beneath her petticoat?
Wouldn't anybody but a poet think twice
Before stating that his girl's feet were mice?
Then they always say things like after a winter storm
The snow is a white blanket. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you
sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and i'll sleep
under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material
and we'll see which one kepts warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.






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I am an invisible man.

[This message has been edited by kbm (edited June 03, 2001).]