F or Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, poetry was simply writing that “fails” to reach the end of the line. For W.H. Auden, a ...

A limerick is five lines long. 2. The limerick's rhyme scheme is AABBA, which means that the first, second, and fifth lines end in a shared rhyme. Likewise, the third and fourth lines rhyme.

Short and easily memorized, the five-line rhymes are often absurd and frequently obscene, as evidenced by the many variations on the best known opener: “There once was a man from Nantucket.” ...