01. The second "such" is used for emphasis.
Analysis
Before making any effort to analyze the poem, it is necessary to give an overall perspective on how such poetic genre, conventionally called limerick, serves its role in English literature. Apart from its contribution in echoing the folkloric songs almost forgotten in the midst of the ruins of history, and what could be regarded as the poetry written for children a in the early stages of twenty century, limerick (especially by works of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear) has been mostly used as a liberating sort of poetry. Such poetry, in itself, has always carried a certain capacity of reacting against the "must do's" of the majority and their authoritarian claims. Nevertheless, despite the fact that neither the source of its name is clearly known nor its historical origins are defensibly determined (believed to be stretched over from the medieval ages to the nineteen century), limerick can be briefly defined as follows:
"A type of light verse and a particularly popular fixed verse form in English. It usually consists of five predominately anapestic lines rhyming aaba." 1
Lines ago, I mentioned the liberating essence of the limerick which is to be evidentially reckoned in its self-assertive pornography and so-called "obscenity", on one hand, and its profanity and extreme satirical tone, on the other. Due to such characteristics, limerick is able to unburden itself fraudulently from the middle-class's moral values and religious authorities. For instance:
"There was a young lady of Niger
Who had an affair with a tiger
The result of the ****
Was a bald-headed duck
Two gnats and a circumscribed spider." 2
Moreover, as George Orwell shows, one could track down a certain kind of political significance in some of these limericks especially when the poem distances from sheer nonsense and approaches toward some sort of "burlesque or perverted logic". What follows is taken from his essay on Lear's poetry:
" For myself, I must say that I find Lear funniest when he is least arbitrary and when a touch of burlesque or perverted logic makes its appearance. When he gives his fancy free play, as in his imaginary names, or in things like "Three Receipts for Domestic Cookery", he can be silly and tiresome. "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" is haunted by the ghost of logic, and I think it is the element of sense in it that makes it funny. The Pobble, it may be remembered, went fishing in the Bristol Channel:
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,
When they saw him nearing the further side—
"He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska's
Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!"
The thing that is funny here is the burlesque touch, the Admirals. What is arbitrary -- the word "runcible", and the cat's crimson whiskers -- is merely rather embarrassing. While the Pobble was in the water some unidentified creatures came and ate his toes off, and when he got home his aunt remarked:
"It's a fact the whole world knows,
That Pobbles are happier without their toes,"
Which once again is funny because it has a meaning, and one might even say a political significance. For the whole theory of authoritarian governments is summed up in the statement that Pobbles were happier without their toes." 3
It is worth mentioning that some specific traits in this poetic genre would make a post-modern critic more than pleased to entitle limerick as poet-modern poetry. Just to mention a few points: its arbitrary structure, consciously designed form, humorousness, withdrawal froma representational and reality-oriented language, its dependency on "textuality" and etc.
Such background would help us to grasp a better picture of Lear's poem "Cold Are the Crabs". The poem begins with the image of some cold crabs, cucumbers and brazen waves on a hill at the persona's side. What comes next would make an example of what Orwell considered as the somehow logical attitude of Lear's limericks. The tedious gloom which festoons the philosophic pills. It is quite interesting that after giving a series of random images from a natural scene, we face with some neatly selected words like "gloom" and "tedious" associated with philosophic pills. A shadowy remark on metaphysical thoughts given to man in shape of a pill, sugarcoated though.
The line after, describes men and demon loading their "ample bowls" by the nectar drips. Right after that, we encounter a number of animals lurking somewhere. The association of men with demons, a porcupine, feeble mouse and a homely hen suggests the persona's overarching look to life and probably the "ample bowls" represent the greedy side of life.
Despite all that, and according to the further lines, something, great in number, is still left out there resembling a sad song "solemn strain", and doomed to vanish contiguous with the ending of the day. What remains, emphatically collocated with "much", probably signifies the merits of life being away from the creature's all-consuming presence.
The poem ends with a rather surrealistic image of an assemblage of walruses on a far green land. The word "gamut", however, connotes both an area and a range of musical notes. Between these two definitions, the latter interacts better with the previously mentioned dying song.
With reference to the finale of the poem, and its emphatic remark on the life, having much remained out of reach and ready to vanish, one could interpret that, not without endangering himself with over reading though, there is some life-force or some sort of "higher-reality" left unknown to mankind. But there might be some "political significance" behind the gathering of "wily walruses" as well; for one thing, because of the word wily itself, and for another thing, because of the fact that walruses' look, with their tusks and whiskers, neatly resembles to that of the 19th century's politicians like senators etc.