things what i have found

Cooked Goose

As I walked by myself I talked to myself,
And thus myself said to me,
Look to thyself and take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.
So I turned to myself, and I answered myself,
In the self-same reverie,
Look to myself or look not to myself,
The self-same thing will it be.

This bit of nonsense was published in The Real Mother Goose (1916), a well-known collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but appears to have an older and slightly more sinister provenance: the gravestone of a man buried in Homersfield, Suffolk, in 1810.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you see here is an account of the world’s first freestyle battle rap.

A Devil in Every Berry

And must I wholly banish hence
These red and golden juices,
And pay my vows to Abstinence,
That pallidest of Muses?

— William Watson, To a Maiden who bade me shun Wine.

Reversible Verse

A palindrome addressed to a young man detained in Rome by a love affair—

Roma ibi tibi sedes ibi tibi Amor;
Roma etsi te terret et iste Amor,
Ibi etsi vis te non esse sed es ibi,
Roma te tenet et Amor.

At Rome you live at Rome you love;
From Rome that love may you affright,
Although you’d leave, you never move,
For love and Rome both bar your flight.