AustLit

Author's note: There is a record of a Sanscrit poem so smartly written that it manages to tell, through the one set of words, both the story of the Mahabharata and the story of the Ramayana. The following couplets are a rough shot at doing the same by two venerable English works. It might be a sound plan to allow no one to utter a word publicly about poetry without having solved such a puzzle and having shown an accurate sense of the essential ingenuity in any versification, even in 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'.

It might not be bad too to insist that such riddles are at least as exciting as any report of what a human being happens to feel when it is thwarted in its lusts or travels on a tram. Each phrase of the following is supposed to fit each of the two poems.