T h e M i s s i n g R h y m e
Reading edition
by Henry Tyrrell.
Illustration by E. V. Nadherny.
HE trouble was, no word would rhyme with month.
And that was why my lovely birthday sonnet,
Meeting this obstacle, was wrecked upon it.
“Oh, fairest day of springtime’s fairest month”—
Thus I began, and there I stuck at “month.”
Her birthday is the first of May.
“Dog-gone it!”
I cried, “I can’t go on, now I’ve begun it—
Unless, perchance, I write of May the one-th.”
Then went I to my lady love, with all
The story of my tenderness and trouble—
Explained how words in Poetry must double,
And how my sonnet’s sweetness turned to gall
Because I couldn’t find a rhyme for “month.”
She laughed, and lithped the answer—“You’re a dunth!”
“She laughed and lithped the answer—‘You’re a dunth!’”