Some of my favourite bits from Archy and Mehitabel poems.

• Cheerio, My Deario
  • It's cheerio / my deario that/ pulls a lady through.
• The Lesson of the Moth
  • It is better to be happy / for a moment / and burned up with beauty / than to live a long time / and be bored all the while.
  • we are like human beings / used to be before they became / too civilized to enjoy themselves.
• Song of Mehitabel
  • Cage me and I'd go frantic / My life is so romantic.
  • A maltese cat came by / with a come hither look in his eye / and a song that soared to the sky
• things Archy calls the pharaoh in Archy Interviews a Pharaoh
  • My regal leatherface
  • Old tan and tarry
  • Majestic mackerel
  • Imperial pretzel
  • Your royal dryness
  • Divine drouth
  • Imperial fritter
  • old salt codfish
  • Poor prune
  • Reverend juicelessness
  • Royal desiccation
  • Unfortunate residuum
• Mehitabel's Extensive Past
  • We would rather be rowdy and gaunt and free/ and dine on a diet of roach and rat / than slaves to a tame society / ours is the zest of the alley cat.
• Certain Maxims of Archy
  • Insects have / their own point / of view about / civilization. A man / thinks he amounts / to a great deal / but to a / flea or a / mosquito, a / human being is / merely something / good to eat.
  • I once heard the survivors / of a colony of ants / that had been partially / obliterated by a cow's foot / seriously debating / the intention of the gods / towards their civilization.