A strange couplet quoted by Kerouac and ascribed to Mountain Man Jim Bridger:
“I saw a petrified bird in a petrified tree,
Singing his petrified song.”
It reminds me of the parody of Vergil – the complete text of which I cannot find – by Charles Perrault. It is quoted by Dostoevsky in the The Brothers Karamazov:
J’apercus l’ombre d’un cocher
Qui, tenant l’ombre d’une brosse
Nettoyait l’ombre d’un carrosse.
Ever so slightly altered by Dostoevsky:
J’ai vu l’ombre d’un cocher
Qui avec l’ombre d’une brosse
Frottait l’ombre d’une carrosse.
“I saw the shadow of a coachman who with the shadow of a brush was cleaning the shadow of a coach.”
There are a lot of reasons why this works well as parody, not least of which is the incongruity of Aeneas finding 17th century coaches and coachmen in the underworld.
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