FullReads

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 gain–but 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.