As I have mentioned before, I really enjoy the poetry of Harry Graham and his “Ruthless Rhymes” such as this one:
When grandmama fell off the boat,
And couldn’t swim (and wouldn’t float),
Matilda just stood by and smiled.
I almost could have slapped the child.
Graham is scrupulously meticulous with rhyme and metre. That particular verse is timeless, but a lot of his work is a commentary on the society of his day and is dated, and sometimes incomprehensible to us today.
A A Milne, on the other hand, writes poems for children that don’t change through generations and have been delighting people for a hundred years (When We Were Very Young was published in 1925!).
I try to avoid using age-able concepts but as soon as you do any kind of social commentary it’s very hard not to.
For example, Polly Tishun deals with typical greedy, egotistical politicians. It ends with the word “taxes” and the rhyme was “telephones and faxes”. It was written a long time ago when fax machines were still the most common form of document transmission. I later amended it to read “emails, phones and faxes” but that doesn’t remove the problem.
Perhaps there will come a time when antihistamines are no longer used to cure hay fever. That will get up allergic Peter the Peacock’s nose!