The Perfect Couplet

Subject: The Perfect Couplet
From: Mick Lowe
Date: 12 Feb 18 - 11:31 PM

Some lyrics strangle the English language in order to try and rhyme.

For me one of the best and most innovative couplets is in Sandy Denny's song "It suits me well"

And I quote..

I've never had a proper home, not one like that your's is
I've nearly always had a caravan with horses

She is greatly missed..

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: CupOfTea
Date: 12 Feb 18 - 11:46 PM

If you've a taste for strangled and stretched rhyme: Les Barker.

Not so dulcet as Denny, but infinitely charming.

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Andy7
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:05 PM

These are the opposite of the kind of perfect couplet you're talking about, as they use much overworked rhymes that are not, in themselves, clever at all.

But I always thought there was a kind of perfection in the sparse couplets of 'Memories Are Made of This', each managing to paint a vivid picture in just 8 words:

One girl, one boy,
Some grief, some joy.

Your lips and mine,
Two sips of wine.

One man, one wife,
One love through life.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Gordon
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:17 PM

Their house is a museum where people come to see 'em;
They really are a scre-am, the Addams Family.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 05:21 PM

From The Simpsons:

'Some folk'll never eat a skunk, but then again some folk'll
Like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel!'

Or how about this rhyme violently shoehorned into Robert Burns 'Address of Beelzebub':

"Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville,
To watch and premier o'er the pack vile"

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Feb 18 - 07:41 PM

From Rick Springfield in Jessie's Girl:

"You know, I feel so dirty when they start talking cute
I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot"

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 03:57 AM

Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy,
It's not your style;
You'll look so good that you'll be glad ya' de-
cided to smile!

"Put On A Happy Face", Lee Adams

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: BobL
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 09:43 AM

Oh b****r, that was me, didn't notice my cookie had expired.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Mick Lowe
Date: 14 Feb 18 - 11:09 PM

Sorry I'm going off piste with this and since I started this thread I feel bad about it.. BUT...

Listening right now to Malicorne (any one here should look them up on you tube or some where) also a French Canadian band called Le Vent du Nord, who are brilliant (again look them up on you tube), but it makes me smile that the French language is so perverse that the only way you can lines to rhyme is by repeating it. Over and over again.

Noticed the same thing when watching BBC Alba, well let's face it.. the Scots, the welsh, the Irish, the French... They're all a bunch of Celts..

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: TheSnail
Date: 15 Feb 18 - 03:35 PM

I can never forgive Ewan MacColl for -

Kissed her once again at Wapping
After that there was no stopping

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Feb 18 - 07:35 PM

SS-VI

Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair
    To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Kristoffer Ross
Date: 21 Feb 18 - 08:54 PM

Also Ewan MacColl
Come on then Dai, it's nearly light
Time you were off to the anthracite
Best,
    ~Kristoffer

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: mg
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 12:28 AM

worst line ever in my mind..worse than mcarthur park

come to your life like a warrior
don't let it bore yer

i twitch badly when i hear it.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 02:13 AM

I agree, mg. That's a href=/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=5471>Song of the Soul, by Cris Williamson. I wonder if she put that line in just to be obnoxious and see if she could get away with it.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 06:52 AM

A couple from mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron:

But O ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?

Not a couplet, but a paradigm of its kind:

Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
       And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
       Last--yours has lately been a common case;

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 07:48 AM

The Style Council - Walls Come Tumbling Down:

"Those who have, and those who have not
They dangle jobs like a donkey's carrot"

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 05:59 PM

From one of mine          Moving microbes , that's a tough 'un/ some of them is just plain stubborn !

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 23 Feb 18 - 11:59 PM

From Dave Carter's The River, Where She Sleeps

Professor come to burst my bubble, says that girl is bound for trouble
Serves me solace in a paper cup
But it looks a bit like agent orange and when he leaves he slams the door and just about that time she phones me up.

Mike

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 03:20 AM

From "The magic pear tree", Graham Pratt.
The scene of the crime was the orchard
Where their love had so long been tortured.


Robin

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 05:51 AM

One from the Beastie Boys:

Mike my stromy, don't be so selfish
Just get on the mic, 'coz you know you eat shellfish

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 06:01 AM

And this irresistible one from the lovely Ariana Grande:

I only wanna die alive, never by the hands of a broken heart
Don't wanna hear you lie tonight, now that I've become who I really are

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Gda Music
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 01:26 PM

2 lines of chorus from*Mango Vert* a bawdy Sparrow calypso c1959.
(a guy with some girl and a mango fruit!).

    She said if you eat it right the hair won`t stick in you teeth
    And you bound to say how it tasting sweet, sweet, sweet.

GJ

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: michaelr
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 03:09 PM

The shortest couplet and conversation ever (and it's Scottish):

"Tay?"
"Nay."

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 05:28 PM

well theres always this one....


https://soundcloud.com/denise_whittle/george-joseph-smith

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 06:37 PM

I always thought that that 60s hit by the Turtles had the worst couplet:
“So happy together, how is the weather?”

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Kristoffer Ross
Date: 26 Feb 18 - 07:37 AM

My close acquaintance and mentor Bob Warren has one I really love:
"Politically, we don't get along,
'Cause I lean left, and you lean wrong."
    ~Kristoffer

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 26 Feb 18 - 08:03 AM

From: michaelr - PM
Date: 24 Feb 18 - 03:09 PM
The shortest couplet and conversation ever (and it's Scottish):

"Tay?"
"Nay."

Only six letters. How about (before someone shortens it further):

"Bar?"
"Ta!"

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: leeneia
Date: 26 Feb 18 - 05:43 PM

Steve, that is painful. "Who I really are."

The song 'Once in Love with Amy' has some beauties:

ever and ever fascinated by 'er.
sets your heart on fire
to stay.

OR

once you're kissed by Amy,
tear up your list, it's Amy.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 26 Feb 18 - 06:27 PM

Lorenz Hart was fond of couplets;

In a mountain greenery
Where God paints the scenery

Just two crazy people together

While you love your lover
Let blue skies be your coverlet

When it rains we'll laugh at the weather

And if you're good
I'll search for wood

So you can cook
While I stand looking

Beans could get no keener re-
Ception in a beanery

Bless our mountain greenery home

Simple cooking means
More than French cuisines

I've a banquet planned Which is sandWiches and beans

Coffee's just as grand
With a little sand

Eat and you'll grow fatter, boy
S'matter, boy?
Huh, huh, atta boy

In a mountain greenery
Where God paints the scenery

Just two crazy people together

How-how-how-how-how we love sequestering
Where no pests are pestering

No dear momma holds us in tether

Mosquitoes here
Won't bite you, dear

I'll let them sting
Me on the finger

Beans could get no keener re-
Ception in a beanery

Bless our mountain greenery
Far from life's machinery

Bless our mountain greenery home

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Feb 18 - 06:45 PM

From "Summer Girls" by LFO:

Fell deep in love, but now we ain’t speakin’
Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 04:01 AM

Yes, in days gone by the likes of Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter and others got away with tortuous feminine rhymes, which today would be shunned as too excruciating. Check out Noel Cowards Mad Dogs and Englishmen, where even the male rhymes can be strained:

The toughest Burmese Bandit
Can never understand it
In Rangoon the heat of Noon
Is just what the natives shun
They put their Scotch and Rye down
And lie down in a Jungle town

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 04:29 AM

Much as I love the Gershwin's, I've always hated the lines "the world will pardon my mush, for I have got a crush my baby on you".

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 08:13 AM

From The Wrong Bus by Jez Lowe

I’m on the wrong bus, the wrong bus,
Fate has played a cruel jest on me,
I’m on the wrong bus, the wrong bus,
I wanted Piccadilly, now I’m off to Picardie

“I took the wrong bus, the wrong bus,”
And he told me such a familiar tale,
“I took the wrong bus, the wrong bus,
I wanted Passenhausen, now I’m here in Paschendale

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: leeneia
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 10:16 AM

Those are some beauties, Henry.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 06:16 PM

Jez Lowe introduces and performs The Wrong Bus;

Wrong Bus

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 07:57 PM

The Other Me, by Paul McCartney:

I know I was a crazy fool for treating you the way I did
But something took hold of me and I acted like a dustbin lid

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 01:21 AM

On the Illness of the Prince of Wales (1910) Alfred Austin, possibly

O'er the wires the electric message came,
"He is no better; he is much the same."

Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 06:14 AM

There's this famous one by W.H. Auden:

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message: “He is dead!”

It's on the gravestone of someone I knew, the one-time landlord of the Bush Inn at Morwenstow, near Bude, a bloke called Jim. He was a bit of a miserable old bugger. We went up there one fine summer's evening for some pub grub. It's about a 25-minute drive from our house. When we got there he was sitting outside having a smoke. He told us that we couldn't have anything there because he couldn't be bothered to open up that night. We had to call at the chippy on the way home instead. I heard later that his refusal to open was a not-infrequent occurrence. After he died his long-time partner, Beryl, took over the pub. If anything she was even more miserable, though, to be fair, she was a bit disabled and shouldn't really have been doing it. If you asked for a pint of Guinness she put on a face like thunder as it meant her walking five yards to the other end of the bar, up two steps, then back down again. You felt guilty asking. It must have been she who arranged that gravestone. She never referred to him in any other way than "my partner Jim." That headstone never fails to amuse us. Such a joyless verse, but somehow so apt...

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 06:33 AM

"How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time."
From the epic poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster" by William Topaz McGonagall.:-)

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 08:20 AM

Oh God, I forgot about him. There must be enough material for a very long thread there!

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 09:41 AM

Visited Morwenstow some yrs back. I seem to remember there was a Victorian vicar at the church that often rescued sailors at sea

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Jerry
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 09:45 AM

Yes, but there is a difference surely? His were meant to be excruciating, for comic effect, whereas most of the above examples were serious but corny and cringingly contrived (like that alliteration there).

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 11:48 AM

That would be Parson Stephen Hawker, Pete. He was vicar of Morwenstow for forty years in the 19th century. A replica of the masthead rescued from the wreck of the Caledonia in on show in the same churchyard as the headstone I mentioned. The lovely old church has an extremely ancient baptismal font from Norman times which has ropework carving around the rim. The ancient carved bench ends are also well worth seeing. As with many old churches that have been subjected to restorations, there's a mixture of styles inside and out. The good vicar built a tiny hut on the nearby cliff top out of driftwood, where he would sit with his opium pipe contemplating his navel. It's a lovely spot, very high on the cliff, and the hut is the smallest property of the National Trust, free to visit. I have lots of photos of friends and family who love to sit in the hut to be snapped. The best time to see the churchyard is in the spring when it's full of celandines and primroses, but it's good at any time of year. If it's a nice day it's well worth walking the half-mile over the fields to the hut. And the Bush Inn is better then it used to be, with a nice beer garden. I've played music there a number of times. I especially remember some nights there in the late 1990s when it was a great spot to see Comet Hale-Bopp. Remember that one? Very close by are the Rectory Farm Tearooms, which are utterly excellent if you want a really nice lunch or cream tea. Who needs Rough Guides when you've got me!

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 07:00 PM

Mickey and Minnie Mouse - or were they just good friends?

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Mick Lowe
Date: 01 Mar 18 - 12:33 AM

I wasn't expecting this thread to generate so much response.. though Mike in Brunswick, that line "She served me solace in a paper cup" I think is brilliant.

Sometimes you have to listen to the whole lyrics in context and forgive the odd strained rhyme. I think more than one of mine have made people cringe.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 01 Mar 18 - 04:11 AM

Loudon Wainwright wrote this very clever and witty song for the film Knocked Up.

When it's grey in L.A. I sure like it that way
Cause there's way too much sunshine around here
I don't know about you, I get so sick of blue
Skies wherever they always appear

And I sure love the sound of the rain pouring down
On my carport roof made out of tin
If there's a flood then there's gonna be mud
Slides; we all have to pay for our sin

And I suppose that they'll close canyon roads
And the freeways will all start to clog
And the waters will rise and you won't be surprised
When your whole house smells like a wet dog

When it's grey in L.A. it's much better that way
It reminds you that this town's so cruel
Yeah it might feel like fun when you're sportin' sun
Glasses, but really you're just one more fool

And I'm just a chump, this whole town's a dump
We came out here to dump all our dreams
Of making it big but we're stuck in a Sig
Alert nightmare, that's just how it seems

And I suppose Laurie David sure knows
All those cars we drive heat up our earth
And sea temperatures rise and those constant blue
Skies and brush fires can sure curb your mirth

Brad Grey's in L.A. Yeah, OK, I should stay
Here. There's no place that's better I know
For a wannabe star stuck in a car
On a freeway with nowhere to go

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Joe_F
Date: 01 Mar 18 - 06:25 PM

IMO, the worst rhyme in English prosody occurs in a song I otherwise admire:

There grows a tree in paradise,
And the pilgrims call it the tree of life.

The last word is spread over two measures, during which the naive listener has time to wonder whether it is going to be "lies" or "lice".

But then it gets to

Too late, but never mind.

and all is forgiven.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 06:09 PM

interesting Steve . I recognized the name , butI had forgotten it. I dont think we got to the hut. if we get that way again I aim to rectify that

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: Andy7
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 06:23 PM

W.S. Gilbert, from 'The Pirates of Penzance':

In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy,
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.

Subject: RE: The Perfect Couplet
From: GUEST,Kristoffer Ross
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 10:39 PM

YES, Andy! Although, in fairness, I believe "strategy/sat a gee" is the comic solution to the stage direction "troubled for a rhyme". The same song's chorus is:
"In short, in matters animal or vegetable of mineral,
His is the very model of a modern Major-General"
    Chuckling just thinking about that song.
~Kristoffer