Ronnie Knox: Two Limericks and a rejoinder

Knox on Predestination

There was a young man who said 'Damn!
I have suddenly found that I am
A creature that moves
On predestinate grooves,
Not a bus, as one hoped, but a tram.'

A Knoxonian Ontology

Jesus College, Oxford. First Quad. By John Wigham

There was a young man who said 'God
Must think it exceedingly odd
When he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no-one about in the Quad.'

REPLY

Dear Sir:
Your astonishment's odd,
I am always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
GOD.




 [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A Cambridge rejoinder

A young man said 'Surely God ought
To respond to this worrying thought:
Why oh why does this tree
Continue to be
When there's no-one about in the Court?'

Chapel Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. By Azeira. CC Public Domain.

REPLY

Dear Sir,
A celestial retort:
These things are not quite as you thought;
The mysterious tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Myself in the Court.

PB 2016


Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was the son of an Anglican bishop but converted to Catholicism. He was a brilliant classicist, wit and raconteur as well as a priest, a theologian, a translator of the Bible and an author of detective stories. He went to Balliol College Oxford, hence my use of 'Knox on' and 'Knoxonian',  and his use of the word 'quad'. In Cambridge, the enclosed area of grass found in  colleges is  termed not a quad but a 'court'. Here is an area, I thought, where I might.. with um, much respect to a master... redress Knox's bias a little.