The Verse
Baum stated the premise of his collection clearly in his opening rhyme:
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- Old Mother Goose became quite new,
- And joined a Women's Club,
- She left poor Father Goose at home
- To care for Sis and Bub.
- They called for stories by the score,
- And laughed and cried to hear
- All of the queer and merry songs
- That in this book appear....
After its initial popularity, though, Father Goose proved to be less durable than those children's books that eventually become recognized as classics. No one claims that Baum's nonsense poems are as good as those of Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll. His verse is facile, but often little more than that:
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- Did you ever see a rabbit climb a tree?
- Did you ever see a lobster ride a flea?
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- Did you ever?
- No, you never!
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- For they simply couldn't do it, don't you see?
Baum continued in the vein of children's verse for a short time, producing his Army Alphabet and Navy Alphabet in 1900; then he largely abandoned verse for prose, and Oz was born.
Read more about this topic: Father Goose: His Book
Famous quotes containing the word verse:
“There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet’s bombast!”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he lives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)