Poems

Dickery, Dickery, Dock

Mother Goose 1806 – 
 
 
 

Dickery, dickery, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Dickery, dickery, dock.

 
 
Analysis (ai): The poem follows a simple anapestic trimeter with an AABB rhyme scheme, common in nursery rhymes of the 17th century, emphasizing rhythm for oral recitation and child engagement.
  • Narrative and Symbolism: A mouse’s ascent and retreat coinciding with the clock striking one suggests a fleeting disruption of mechanical order, possibly reflecting early modern anxieties about time and domestic intrusion.
  • Cultural Context: Unlike later Romantic-era verse that anthropomorphizes animals sentimentally, this rhyme treats the mouse as a neutral agent, consistent with pre-industrial folklore’s matter-of-fact tone toward nature.
  • Temporal Motif: The lone chime marking the event introduces time as a structural force, a theme later amplified in Industrial Age poetry, though here it operates whimsically rather than critically.
  • Repetition and Function: The refrain encloses the action, reinforcing mnemonic value, typical of oral tradition, where pattern aids recall more than narrative depth.
  • Place in Author’s Work: As part of a collective corpus attributed to “Mother Goose,” it aligns with the corpus’s emphasis on rhythm and brevity, though its temporal motif is less common than moralized or grotesque tales.
  • Modern Resonance: Post-1900 readers may interpret the clock-mouse dynamic as an early allegory for futility or routine, themes central to modernist literature, though the poem lacks explicit existential commentary.
  • Formal Experimentation: It does not experiment beyond traditional form, but its tight structure prefigures minimalist approaches in 20th-century children’s verse that favor sonic play over didacticism.
  • Less-Discussed Angle: Rather than viewing the mouse as merely playful, it can be read as an agent of chaos briefly disrupting a symbol of measured time, a motif anticipated in later works like Eliot’s Prufrock.

Mother Goose

1806 –
 

Mother Goose is a character that originated in children’s fiction, as the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. She also appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. The character also appears in a pantomime tracing its roots to 1806.

About Mother Goose
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