May 12


Amber pages

                                             There once was a man named Ed Lear,
                                             Whose verse was decidedly queer.
                                             Two lines and a rhyme.
                                             That's it? It's just fine.
                                             And now can we go for a beer?


Don't like that last line? Rhymezone reckons there are 429 words in the English language that rhyme with Lear, so you can surely make up your own improvement. And then go look at his paintings - I'll bet you didn't even know he painted (t
he one at the top of this page is Lear's "Mount Athos And The Monastery Of Stavroniketes" from 1857. No-nonsense art!). Musician too. But earned his living as an ornithologist. Polymaths of the world unite!

               
                              Lear was born, by the way
                                             In London, in north Holloway,
                                             Though some call it Highgate.
                                             And as to the date,
                                             1812, on the 12th day of May



And eight years later (1820), Florence Nightingale, nurse and hospital reformer.

And eight years after that (
1828), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet-painter, the man who invented the term "stunner".







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