Limerick (poetry)

A limerick is a funny, silly, rude, or sexual poem that has five (or four) lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with each other and have eight (or more) syllables. Lines 3 and 4 have a different rhyme word and have five (or more) syllables each. The poem often begins with "There was a ...", but it doesn't have to.

A limerick displayed on a plaque in the city of Limerick, Ireland

This one is by Rudyard Kipling:

There was a small boy of Quebec,
Who was buried in snow to his neck;
When they said, “Are you friz?”
He replied, “Yes, I is—
But we don’t call this cold in Quebec.”

A limerick by Edward Lear, who is famous for writing this kind of poem, has four lines because he combines lines 3 and 4 into one ten-syllable line:

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

Related pages

• Poetry
• Blank verse
• Free verse
• Verse-chorus form
• Ballad
• Rhyme
• Stanza
• Ode
• Sonnet