“Swinburne… boasted to Burne-Jones that he had ‘discovered the one serious rhyme in the language’ to ‘babe’, which was, not very helpfully, ‘astrolabe’.”
Mollie Panter-Downes, At The Pines : Swinburne And Watts-Dunton In Putney (1971).
I was directed to this magnificent and eccentric book by Nige, who also provides a link to Max Beerbohm’s account of his Putney visit.
When you consider that the child of Peter Abelard and Heloise was called Astrolabe, all kinds of rhyming possibilities open up.
Help…!
I’ve got Sonny and Cher stuck in my integuments…
He should have made them up like Lewis Carrol:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
all the best
Arnold (a rough musician)