Ogden Nash Poems

A collection of select Ogden Nash famous poems that were written by Ogden Nash or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.

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Two Dogs HaveI

by Ogden Nash
 For years we've had a little dog,
Last year we acquired a big dog;
He wasn't big when we got him,
He was littler than the dog we had.
We thought our little dog would love him,
Would help him to become a trig dog,
But the new little dog got bigger,
And the old little dog got mad.

Now the big dog loves the little dog,
But...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Ogden Nash
 There was a young belle of Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She drawled, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez!...Read more of this...

Crossing The Border

by Ogden Nash
 Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendents
Outnumber your friends....Read more of this...

Come On In The Senility Is Fine

by Ogden Nash
 People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don't have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder,
Because sometimes you feel thirty years younger and sometimes
thirty years older.
Now you...Read more of this...

The Purist

by Ogden Nash
 I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."...Read more of this...

The Sniffle

by Ogden Nash
 In spite of her sniffle
Isabel's chiffle.
Some girls with a sniffle
Would be weepy and tiffle;
They would look awful,
Like a rained-on waffle,
But Isabel's chiffle
In spite of her sniffle.
Her nose is more red
With a cold in her head,
But then, to be sure,
Her eyes are bluer.
Some girls with a snuffle,
Their tempers are uffle.
But when Isabel's snivelly
She's snivelly civilly,
And when she's snuffly
She's perfectly luffly....Read more of this...

Song of the Open Road

by Ogden Nash
 I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all....Read more of this...

The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus

by Ogden Nash
 In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.


In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't...Read more of this...

The Turtle

by Ogden Nash
 The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex. 
I think it clever of the turtle 
In such a fix to be so fertile....Read more of this...

The Joyous Malingerer

by Ogden Nash
 Who is the happy husband? Why, indeed,
'Tis he who's useless in the time of need;
Who, asked to unclasp a bracelet or a neckless,
Contrives to be utterly futile, fumbling, feckless,
Or when a zipper nips his loved one's back
Cannot restore the zipper to its track.
Another time, not wishing to be flayed,
She will not use him as a lady's maid.

Stove-wise he's the...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Ogden Nash
 Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."...Read more of this...

The Hunter

by Ogden Nash
 The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
is hoping to outwit a duck...Read more of this...

The Porcupine

by Ogden Nash
 Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.
I know one hound that laughed all winter 
At a porcupine that sat on a splinter....Read more of this...

The Middle

by Ogden Nash
 When I remember bygone days
I think how evening follows morn;
So many I loved were not yet dead,
So many I love were not yet born....Read more of this...

Good-By Now or Pardon My Gauntlet

by Ogden Nash
 Bring down the moon for genteel Janet;
She's too refined for this gross planet.
She wears garments and you wear clothes,
You buy stockings, she purchases hose.
She say That is correct, and you say Yes,
And she disrobes and you undress.
Confronted by a mouse or moose,
You turn green, she turns chartroose.
Her speech is new-minted, freshly quarried;
She has a fore-head, you have a forehead.
Nor...Read more of this...

Grandpa Is Ashamed

by Ogden Nash
 A child need not be very clever
To learn that "Later, dear" means "Never."...Read more of this...

Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too

by Ogden Nash
 Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.

When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does...Read more of this...

The Camel

by Ogden Nash
 The camel has a single hump; 
The dromedary , two; 
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?...Read more of this...

Very Like a Whale

by Ogden Nash
 One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the 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...Read more of this...

The Squab

by Ogden Nash
 Toward a better world I contribute my modest smidgin;
I eat the squab, lest it become a pigeon....Read more of this...

No Doctors Today Thank You

by Ogden Nash
 They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful,
well, today I feel euphorian,
Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetitite of a
Victorian.
Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,
Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle
any swashes?
This is my euphorian day,
I will ring welkins and before anybody answers...Read more of this...

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty

by Ogden Nash
 Unwillingly Miranda wakes, 
Feels the sun with terror, 
One unwilling step she takes, 
Shuddering to the mirror. 

Miranda in Miranda's sight 
Is old and gray and dirty; 
Twenty-nine she was last night; 
This morning she is thirty. 

Shining like the morning star, 
Like the twilight shining, 
Haunted by a calendar, 
Miranda is a-pining. 

Silly girl, silver girl, 
Draw the...Read more of this...

To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them

by Ogden Nash
 Let's straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I...Read more of this...

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash
 My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...

Reflection On The Fallibility Of Nemesis

by Ogden Nash
 He who is ridden by a conscience
Worries about a lot of nonscience;
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and income soon quadruples....Read more of this...

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