Download Fly Leaves by Charles Stuart Calverley. A comic collection of Victorian verse full of wit and poetic mischief. Available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats.
Fly Leaves Summary
Fly Leaves by Charles Stuart Calverley is a playful and polished collection of comic and satirical verse. A Victorian master of parody and pun, Calverley applies classical structure to modern absurdities with a wink and an impeccable rhyme scheme. The collection includes favorites like Beer, Lines to a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses, and Ode to Tobacco.
Fly Leaves Excerpt
Short Summary: Calverley’s poems don’t brood—they banter. With a classicist’s skill and a jester’s heart, he turns topics from tobacco to trousers into sparkling poetic vignettes that tease, flatter, and satirize in turn.
"O Beer! so bright, so amber-hued, / Thy foam-crowned head with mirth imbued," he writes in Beer, elevating the humble pint to something nearly Homeric.
Elsewhere, roses become comedic burdens, scholarly Latin is twisted into nonsense, and self-deprecation becomes art. Calverley’s genius lies not only in what he mocks—but in how lovingly he does it.
This is poetry for readers who like their humor dry, their meter tight, and their metaphors delightfully overcomplicated. It is a literary wink across the ages—one that reminds us that the Victorians knew how to laugh, and how to do it in impeccable rhyme.
Whether reciting mock-heroics or spoofing romantic verse, Calverley proves himself a poet of intellect and irreverence, balancing scholarly elegance with mischievous wit.
