I think it has a certain force, actually. I recall once getting a distinct nod and smile from an English Faculty academic in the audience when I once did a folksong evening for my late wife's Cambridge college rebuilding fund, on my saying that what I much valued in the poetry of folksong was that knack of just teetering on the verge of doggerel without ever quite falling in. That hymn of Mrs Alexander's seems to me to pull off something of the same feat. What do others think?

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