Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Edward Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) was born on July 10th in London, England. In his youth, he was educated at London’s prestigious St Paul’s School. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a fellow student, and became his best friend.

When Bentley was 16 years old, he started to write short descriptive verses about people he knew, or famous people he had read about. Chesterton took up the hobby too and the rhymes were often accompanied by his sketches.

These little poems became known as Clerihews. What makes it a Clerihew?

1. There are four lines
2. The name of the subject appears in the first line
3. The rhyme scheme is AA/BB
4. It should tell you something about the subject
5. It should be amusing

They’re perfect poems for summer, like a basket of berries – small but juicy.

This is the first known Clerihew:

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

What Sir Humphry Davy did was discover how to isolate substances, such as sodium, when they are in combination with other substances, like calcium or magnesium, which led him to invent an entire new scientific field: electrochemistry. But this ur-Clerihew still a remarkably sophisticated poem for a 16-year-old.

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