Adventures Of Isabel | Poem by Ogden Nash

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Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash
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Adventures of Isabel – The Poem

Isabel met an enormous bear,

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care;

The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,

The bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous.

The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,

How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you!

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry.

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,

Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.

 


Once in a night as black as pitch

Isabel met a wicked old witch.

the witch’s face was cross and wrinkled,

The witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled.

Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,

I’ll turn you into an ugly toad!

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry,

She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,

But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.

 


Isabel met a hideous giant,

Isabel continued self reliant.

The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,

He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,

I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She nibled the zwieback that she always fed off,

And when it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off.

 


Isabel met a troublesome doctor,

He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.

The doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills

And the doctor’s satchel bulged with pills.

The doctor said unto Isabel,

Swallow this, it will make you well.

Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

She took those pills from the pill concocted,

And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.

 


by Ogden Nash

An Adventure Story

Remember, when we were kids, all our stories began with ‘Once upon a time!’. So here is my story, with a similar beginning.

Once upon a time, I along with a bunch of my cousins, around 7 of them, were playing in the garden. I am the eldest, you see. It was around three in the afternoon. Before we could start the game of volleyball I had to cut the size of the net, as it was too big given our sizes. And all the tools that I could fetch from my home was a knife from the kitchen. It was tough but efforts were worthy as the net was now good for our heights. And we were ready to start.

Our team was losing 4-2 in the game. I was just hoping that it starts raining before the time get over, which was in around seven minutes. But unfortunately, the sky was clear and there was no way the match could be saved. The other team had also switched on the defense mode, which in our case was ‘start fighting‘, so that time gets wasted and the other party doesn’t have enough to score a point.

As we were in the middle of our fight, suddenly there was a dead dark. It was pitch black as if someone has switched off the lights in the middle of the night. How could this be? It was only 04:10 pm on my wristwatch. As we were all looking at each other shocked, the light came on. But how could that go in the first place? One of my young cousins got scared. He asked about what just happened. And then again the lights went off and came back again in 25-30 seconds. It was dead silent and we were dead scared. Somewhere from far-far away, we could hear a light sound “tok-tok–tok-tok“.

These episodes of light going off and coming back as if someone was switching off the button of sun, like that of a bulb, continued for 3-4 times. The sound kept getting louder, “toog-dook–toog-dook”. Suddenly Danny pointed towards a giant horse emerging out of the lake adjacent to the park. It was heading towards us. We could only see a shadow-like image since the lights were off.

Suddenly the lights came up. And we could clearly see, sitting on the giant horse was a giant witch. Together they equaled the height of a five-storey building. As it was racing towards us the lights went off again.

Adventure story for kids
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Tanya and Sam had already started crying out of fear. They just came near us and she stopped her horse. And suddenly we all started crying. And she started laughing. A burst of villainous laughter “ha-ha-ha–ha-ha—haha-ha“. “Tonight I am going to have a feast, ya’ll look like a desert”, she said. “Ummmmm! So sweet! My mouth is already watering. She was huge and scary. We couldn’t have a proper glimpse of her face, even if we tried looking as high as we could. Her head was high in the sky. We could only see till the shoulder bag tied near her waist.

“Don’t worry my children!” she said and grasped us all in her giant hands. As we were all standing on the palm of her hand she raised it up near her face and said, “Don’t worry, it will be all right.” And then she put us all in her enormous bag. She packed the bag and started riding her horse. We were thumping inside the bag and turning all upside-down. It was scary like hell.

We reached her home. She parked the horse in the stable, pulled us out of the bag and tied her bag to the horse. We were in a glass full of oil in her hand. And now we could see her. Her dress changed from her cowboy pants to a beautiful red gown and she had removed her mask. Her face wasn’t scary, but she was, trust me!

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She took us to her home. It wasn’t home, it was a huge palace. And it looked like she was extremely hungry. She took us straight to the kitchen, switched on the gas, out a pan over it. Once the pan was slightly hot, she poured us along with oil into the pan. It was better than before, as we were suffocating inside the glass. But as it started getting hotter, we started screaming. This annoyed her, I guess. So she decided otherwise, she poured us back into the glass. And gulped us in one sip, without even chewing. Maybe we slipped down from her throat into her belly.

It was dark down there and all sticky and stinky. We were screaming to the loudest of the pitch. Danny always carried a torch with him. I asked him to pull that out of her pocket and switch that on so we could see each other one last time. And lucky for us, he found two things in his pocket, the torch and the covered knife. This was the one we used to cut the net for the game. As he switched on the torch, we saw Cathy still hanging on to something up there. She was so scared of falling down. And we were all covered in liquid which was multi-colored. Was it her blood?

Chris was the strongest of us all. He instantly took the knife and started scratching and cutting the tubes around, maybe it was her intestine. As he started cutting, there was a huge catastrophe inside. Like an earthquake or maybe a land-slide. Maybe she fell down on the floor because we were tearing her stomach from inside. Whatever, Chris didn’t give up, he continued tearing. It took him another two hours until we could see the light from outside. He did his work well, soon there was a cut big enough that we could all climb up and come out of her stomach. Maybe she was dead by now.

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Hurray! Never before we had experienced such a joy of victory. But how are we going to get back to our homes? We had no mobile phones back then. But this was the biggest adventure of Isabel!

 

Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash - UpDivine
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Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared the country’s best-known producer of humorous poetry.

Nash was regarded with respect by the literary establishment, and his poems were frequently anthologized even in serious collections such as Selden Rodman’s 1946 A New Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Nash wrote humorous poems for each movement of the Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals, which are sometimes recited when the work is performed. The original recording of this version was made by Columbia Records in the 1940s, with Noël Coward reciting the poems and Andre Kostelanetz conducting the orchestra.

To read more about Ogden Nash, click here.

Adventures of Isabel – Poem Analysis / Summary

Adventures of Isabel, by Ogden Nash, is a poem about four adventurous episodes of a young girl named Isabel. All these episodes are enough to scare anyone to hell. One when she meets a huge bear ready to eat her, a witch ready to turn her into an ugly toad, a giant who wants to grind her and make a bread out of her bones, and the scariest doctor ready to feed her with the bag full of medicines. Despite all this, she doesn’t lose her cool and make mincemeat of her opponents.

This is an extremely humorous poem by Ogden Nash. Kids just love this poem. You read this in front of them once and they will ask you to repeat the same again and again.


To read more famous poems by the finest writers ever, click here.

Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash
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