The Song of the Jellicles

“The Song of the Jellicles” is a whimsical children’s poem composed with a strict rhyme scheme and in a mostly consistent meter. The speaker of the poem is unnamed. Typical of an Eliot poem, the author of the poem detaches himself from the content of the poem, meaning Eliot as the poet does not impose his own voice into the words. Instead, the anonymous speaker allows the poem to feel timeless and universal.

While the poem flows in a singsong manner with simple imagery and diction choices, Eliot uses some obscure words that elevate the vocabulary of the poem beyond typical children’s verse. Additionally, while the poem is whimsical in tone and content, there is a kind of mysterious, almost occult or spiritual feeling to the world of the Jellicles.

The tone and mood of the poem share similarities to Lewis Carroll’s imagined world in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). Other similar fantastical worlds with a hint of strange darkness appear in many children’s fantasies, including stories like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997).