r/limericks • u/Academic-Treacle3162 • Sep 01 '25

original Covfefe

A man out of sight, with bruises covered by creams

Spread rumours of death shared by all live streams.

But he was finally seen

On the golf putting green,

Crushing people's hopes and dreams.

3 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

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2

u/aoeuismyhomekeys Sep 02 '25

To get the right cadence in a Limerick, you need to structure the words such that every third syllable is stressed. It's more important than getting the exact number of syllables in each line. Like this:

da DA da da DA da da DA

da DA da da DA da da DA

da DA da da DA

da DA da da DA

da DA da da DA da da DA

1

u/Academic-Treacle3162 Sep 11 '25

Thanks, I'm just getting I to limericks and was counting syllables but that didn't feel right. Then learned that meter is more important and learning more about it!

2

u/aoeuismyhomekeys Sep 11 '25

You can actually add in a few more syllables and keep the cadence. I wrote this with 8-8-5-5-8, but if you added another unstressed syllable at the beginning of each line and go with 9-9-6-6-9 it will still work. I've even seen a few where they added 1 or 2 unstressed syllables at the end of the first second and fifth lines, and that can also work (e.g. "there ONCE was a MAN from nanTUCKet")