Cats Cradle Song, by a Babe in Knots

James Clerk Maxwell 1831 (Edinburgh, Scotland) – 1879 (Cambridge, England)



Peter the Repeater,
Platted round a platter
Slips of slivered paper,
Basting them with batter.

Flype ’em, slit ’em, twist ’em,
Lop-looped laps of paper;
Setting out the system
By the bones of Neper.

Clear your coil of kinkings
Into perfect plaiting,
Locking loops and linkings
Interpenetrating.

Why should a man benighted,
Beduped, befooled, besotted,
Call knotful knittings plighted,
Not knotty but beknotted?

It’s monstrous, horrid, shocking,
Beyond the power of thinking,
Not to know, interlocking
Is no mere form of linking.

But little Jacky Horner
Will teach you what is proper,
So pitch him, in his corner,
Your silver and your copper.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 08, 2023

31 sec read
101

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAAA XAXA BCBC DDDD CCCC AAAA
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 634
Words 105
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics.  more…

All James Clerk Maxwell poems | James Clerk Maxwell Books

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