LIGHT VERSE—CLERIHEWS.

LIGHT VERSE—CLERIHEWS. Just as lyric poetry has its forms, such as the sonnet, so also does light verse have its forms. The clerihew was named after E.C. Bentley (Edmund Clerihew Bentley) and was invented by Bentley. (Bentley was also the author of TRENT’S LAST CASE, a justly celebrated detective story.) According to this wikipedia article, his muse whispered the first clerihew into Bentley’s ear while he was in a science class when he was 16 years old. Here it is:

Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

The wikipedia article gives four requirements for the clerihew, but I think the only two requirements are the AABB rhyme scheme and that the first line should be a proper name. Here is another clerihew by E. C. Bentley:

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy.

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