Another Clerihew


Brahms
had two arms;
Spohr
had four,
while Beethoven
had eight of them.


I'd always felt that there should be a clerihew that rhymed `Brahms' with `arms'. Eventually my then brother-in-law Jeremy Walker supplied one—in the form of the first four lines above. This spurred me to produce the final extra couplet. Purists will no doubt be appalled by this horrible mutant, but I plead that the extra lines are in the nonsense spirit in which clerihews should always be written. Anyway, if they have extra arms why shouldn't it have extra lines? Answer me that! Naturally suggestions for further improvement are welcome, but the number of any subsequent complement of arms must of course be a power of two. (If you need to ask why you shouldn't be reading this page).

(Recently I acquired a copy of `More Biography' By E.C.Bentley, which—it turns out—contains a clerihew that rhymes `Brahms' with `arms'. It goes without saying that the text above is infinitely superior to the puny offering of Edmund Clerihew. B.)

(How about...

Borodin
had sixteen;
and Martinu;
had thirty-two
..??)

Gregory Sankaran has just reminded me that he had contributed

Et Dutilleux
en a eu trente-deux.


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