There once was a man with a beard

3. The poem describes how fog moves over a city. The image of cat creeping into a city

shows how the fog moves slowly into the city. He describes the fog on silent hunches

which I picture to be the cat sitting and waiting and doing nothing before it moves on. In

the same way fog stays for a while and then seems to disappear.

There was an Old Man with a beard (Limerick)

By Edward Lear

1. This limerick is in the AABBA pattern. Lear repeats the last word of the first line in the

last line of the poem (“beard”). The limerick is like a metaphor for a beard that is so long

that it could be place where birds build their nests.

2. I like this limerick because it is funny and I can a picture an old man with such a untidy

and long beard that birds could nest in it. The limerick is silly and would appeal to

children.

3. The limerick is a silly rhyme describing a man’s beard that is so long that eight birds

have nested in it. The tone is one of surprise and shock as the man says, “It is just as I

feared!”. The limerick is silly because it suggests that the beard was so long that the man

didn’t even realize that the birds were there initially.