MR. R.L. STEVENSON:
In winter I get up at night
And hunt that cow by lantern light;
In summer quite the other way,
I seek a Purple Cow by day.
And does it not seem strange to you,
I can't find cows of purple hue?
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'm glad I'm not a Purple Cow.
MR. R. KIPLING:
In the old ten-acre pasture,
Lookin' eastward toward a tree,
There's a Purple Cow a-settin'
And I know she thinks of me.
For the wind is in the gum-tree,
And the hay is in the mow,
And the cow-bells are a-calling
"Come and see a Purple Cow!"
But I am not going now,
Not at present, anyhow,
For I am not fond of purple, and
I can't abide a cow;
No, I shall not go to-day,
Where the Purple Cattle play,
Though I think I'd rather see one
Than to be one, anyhow.
MR. O. HERFORD:
Children, observe the Purple Cow,
You cannot see her, anyhow;
And, little ones, you need not hope
Your eyes will e'er attain such scope.
But if you ever have a choice
To be, or see, lift up your voice
And choose to see. For surely you
Don't want to browse around and moo.
MR. S. CRANE:
Once a man said,
I never saw a Purple Cow;
Again he spoke,
I never hope to see one.
Then all the people said,
How noble his humble-mindedness!
How glorious his meek resignation!
Now this is the strange part
The man has seen hundreds of purple cows,
Ay, thousands,
But the man was color blind,
And the cows seemed to him to be a reddish brown.
MR. D.G. ROSSETTI:
(Second Attempt.)The blessed Purple Cow leaned out
From a pasture lot at even
One horn was sixteen inches long,
The other just eleven.
She had a ruminative face,
And the teeth in her head were seven.
She gazed and listened, then she said
(Less sad of speech than queer),
"Nobody seems to notice me,
None knows that I am here.
And no one wishes to be me!"
She wept. (I heard a tear.)
MR. A.C. SWINBURNE:
(Second Attempt.)Only in dim, drowsy depths of a
dream do I dare to delight
in deliciously dreaming
Cows there may be of a passionate
purple,cows of a violent
violet-hue;
Ne'er have I seen such a sight, I am
certain it is but a demi-
delirious dreaming
Ne'er may I happily harbor
a hesitant hope in my
heart that my dream
may come true.
Sad is my soul, and my senses
are sobbing, so strong
is my strenuous spirit
to see one.
Dolefully, drearily doomed
to despair as warily,
wearily watching I wait;
Thoughts thickly thronging are thrilling
and throbbing; to see is a
glorious gainbut to be one!
That were a darker and
direfuller destiny, that
were a fearfuller,
frightfuller fate.
At the second meeting of the Re-Echo Club, some of whose proceedings have already been chronicled in these pages, the question arose whether the poet was at his best who gave to the world the classic poem about The Little Girl:
"There was a little girl
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid!"
Some members held that poets had at times risen to sublimer poetic flights than this, while others contended that the clear-cut decision of thought it expressed placed the poem above more elaborate works.
When those who criticised it were invited themselves to treat the same theme in more worthy fashion, they willingly enough agreed, and the results here subjoined were spread upon the minutes of the club.
With a lady-like air of reserve tempered by self-respect, Mrs. Felicia Hemans presented her version:
The Marcel waves dash'd high
Where the puffs and frizzes crossed;
And just above a roguish eye
A little curl was tossed.
And that little curl hung down
O'er a brow like a holy saint;
Her goodness was beyond renown,
And yetthere was a taint.
Ay, call it deadly sin,
The temper that she had;
But that Little Girl just gloried in
Freedom to be real bad!
Robert Browning gave the subject much thought and responded at length:
Who will may hear the poet's story told.
His story? Who believes me shall behold
The Little Girl, tricked out with ringolet,
Or fringe, or pompadour, or what you will,
Switch, bang, rat, puffodzooks, man! I know not
What women call the hanks o' hair they wear!
But that same curl, beau-catcher, love-lock, frizz.
(Perchance hot-ironedperchance 'twas bandolined;
Mayhap those rubber squirmers gave it shape
I wot not.) But that corkscrew of a curl
Hung plumb, true, straight, accurate, at mid-brow,
Nor swerved a hair's breadth to the right or left.
Aught of her other tresses none may know.
Now go we straitly on. And undertake
To sound the humor of the Little Girl.
Ha! what's the note? Hark here. When she was good,
She was seraphic; hypersuperfine.
So good she made the saints seem scalawags;
An angel child; a paramaragon.
Halt! Turn! When she elected to be bad,
Black fails to paint the depths of ignomin,
The fearsome sins, the crimes unspeakable,
The deep abysses of her evilment.
Hist! Tell 't wi' bated breath! One day she let
A rosy tongue-tip from red lips peep forth!
Can viciousness cap that? Horrid's the word.
Yet there she is. There is that Little Girl,
Her goodness and her badness, side by side,
Like bacon, streak o' fat and streak o' lean.
Ah, Fatalist, she must be ever so.
Mr. E.A. Poe declared that he wrote his lines without any trouble at all, as he used to know the Little Girl personally:
'Twas not very many years ago,
At Seahurst-By-The-Sea,
A little girl had a little curl
Her name was Annabel Lee.
And right in the middle of Annabel's brow
That curl would always be.
She was so good, oh, she was so good
At Seahurst-By-The-Sea!
She was good with a goodness more than good,
Was beautiful Annabel Lee,
With such goodness the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her of me.
But her badness was stronger by far than the good,
Like many far older than she,
Like many far wiser than she;
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever the good from the bad
In the soul of Annabel Lee,
The beautiful Annabel Lee.
Then Mr. Stevenson went out into his own garden and plucked this:
In winter, I go up at night
And curl that curl by candle-light;
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to curl it twice a day.