Grattis Ogden!

Ogden Nash

19 augusti 1902 - 19 maj 1971

Jo, jag vet att jag skrivit om honom tidigare — och jag vet med säkerhet att jag kommer att skriva om honom igen, för han är en av mina stora favoriter.
Tyvärr är hans halsbrytande rim, med ibland nyskapade ord, svår, för att inte säga omöjlig att översätta. är det något man inte förstår så är mitt tips att läsa det högt, då hör man hur han har knycklat ihop somliga ord för att få det att gå ihop.

Det mesta som han skrivit, finns nog på nätet, men skulle du vilja äga någon (eller alla) av hans böcker, så hittar du både böcker av och om honom hos Bokus.






"Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man"
It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every
     Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very
     important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something
     you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a
     sin of omission and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-
     thinking people, from Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shudda.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin
     as long as, in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don't bother your head about sins of commission
     because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else
     you wouldn't be committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you get really painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven't taken out and the checks you
     haven't added up the stubs of and the appointments you
     haven't kept and the bills you haven't paid and the letters
     you haven't written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful
     lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn't as though it had been a riotous red letter day
     or night every time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn't get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forgot to pay a bill;
You didn't slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly
     cry Whee,
Let's all fail to write just one more letter before we go home,
     and this round of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn't do give you a lot more
     trouble than the unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if
     some kind of sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.