A Poet in the Family

One of John Saxe’s grandchildren was named after two of his uncles and became quite renowned. John Godfrey Saxe was a lawyer, humorist, and noted American poet. A nineteenth-century version of Ogden Nash, he was often published in a sophisticated periodical called The Knickerbocker. Here is a sample of his work, and please note that its construction is crisp, precise, and lacks any high Victorian sentimental dithering:

Rhyme of the Rail

Singing through the forests,

Rattling over ridges;

Shooting under arches,

Rumbling over bridges;

Whizzing through the mountains,

Buzzing o’er the vale,---

Bless me, this is pleasant,

Riding on the rail!

This charming delight zips through stanza after stanza, and its uncut version can be found on the Internet.

To this day, many descendants indulge in writing, especially poetry; our brains simply work this way and we can’t help ourselves. My mother and her sisters Virginia and Jinx were born in thrall to the muse Calliope, as were my sister Kathryn and I.

That last sentence indeed reeks of high Victorian dithering, but I’m postulating that our delight in poetry is an unwitting bequest from Frances Woodley Beers, whose legacy usually makes us wince. Or to phrase it more simply, every thorn has its rose.

John Godfrey Saxe is best known for re-telling the Indian parable, "The Blind Men and the Elephant."

Source: Wikipedia.com