Ogden Nash Verses
In 1949, Ogden Nash wrote a set of humorous verses to accompany each movement for a Columbia Masterworks recording of Carnival of the Animals conducted by Andre Kostelanetz. Recited on the original album by Noël Coward, they are now often included when the work is performed. The conclusion of the verse for the "Fossils", for example, fits perfectly with the punchline-like first bar of the music:
- At midnight in the museum hall
- The fossils gathered for a ball
- There were no drums or saxophones,
- But just the clatter of their bones,
- A rolling, rattling, carefree circus
- Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
- Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
- Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
- Amid the mastodontic wassail
- I caught the eye of one small fossil.
- "Cheer up, sad world," he said, and winked—
- "It's kind of fun to be extinct."
Read more about this topic: The Carnival Of The Animals
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“Here is a pen and here is a pencil,
Here’s a typewriter, here’s a stencil,
Here is a list of today’s appointments,
And all the flies in all the ointments,
The daily woes that a man endures—
Take them, George, they’re yours!”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Whether elected or appointed
He considers himself the Lord’s annointed,
And indeed the ointment lingers on him
So thick you can’t get your fingers on him.”
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—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)