The P‑cock; The Q‑cumber

The striking similarity
of this P‑Q‑liar pair,
No longer need en-cumber us,
or fill us with despair:
The P‑cock and the Q‑cumber
you never need confuse,
If you pay attention to the Eyes
and mind your P’s and Q’s.

Where this text comes from

First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-williams-wood_how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers-and-other-woodcuts, how-to-tell-the-birds-from-the-flowers.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L8.

Cite this poem

Robert Williams Wood (1868–1955). “The P‑cock; The Q‑cumber.” First published in How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers and Other Woodcuts (1917). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-williams-wood/the-p-cock-the-q-cumber/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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