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See the tiger with a smile,
Happy smile!
If such a smile means happiness, he’s happy quite a pile;
How contentedly he chuckles as he trots along the miles.
Oh, he doesn’t growl or groan
As he ambles on alone,
But he smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles,
As he homeward goes along the desert miles.

And Longfellow gave it his beautiful and clever “Hiawatha” setting:

Oh, the fair and lovely lady;
Oh, the sweet and winsome lady;
With a smile of gentle goodness
Like the lovely Laughing Water.
Oh, the day the lovely lady
Went to ride upon a tiger.
Came the tiger, back returning,
Homeward through the dusky twilight;
Ever slower, slower, slower,
Walked the tiger o’er the landscape;
Ever wider, wider, wider,
Spread the smile o’er all his features.

“And so,” said the President, “after numerous examples and careful consideration of this matter, we are led to the conclusion that for certain propositions the Limerick is the best and indeed the only proper vehicle of expression.”

It was at the very next meeting that the President of the club gave the members another Limerick for their consideration. The Limerick was anonymous, but the Re-Echoes were not. Here they are:

THE LIMERICK:

A scholarly person named Finck
Went mad in the effort to think
Which were graver misplaced,
To dip pen in his paste,
Or dip his paste-brush in the ink.

OMAR KHAYYAM’S VERSION:

Stay, fellow traveller, let us stop and think,
Pause and reflect on the abysmal brink;
Say would you rather thrust your pen in paste,
Or dip your paste-brush carelessly in ink?

RUDYARD KIPLING’S VERSION:

Here is a theme that is worthy of our cognizance,
A theme of great importance and a question for your ken;
Would you rather–stop and think well–
Dip your paste-brush in your ink-well,
Or in your pesky pasting-pot immerse your inky pen?

WALT WHITMAN’S VERSION:

Hail, Camerados!
I salute you,
Also I salute the sewing-machine, and the flour-barrel, and the feather duster.
What is an aborigine, anyhow?
I see a paste-pot.
Ay, and a well of ink.
Well, well!
Which shall I do?
Ah, the immortal fog!
What am I myself
But a meteor
In a fog?

CHAUCER’S VERSION:

A mayde ther ben, a wordy one and wyse,
Who wore a paire of gogles on her eyes.
O’er theemes of depest thogt her braine she werked,
Nor ever any knoty problemme sherked.
Yette when they askt her if she’d rather sinke
Her penne in payste, or eke her brushe in inke,
“Ah,” quo’ the canny mayde, “now wit ye wel,
I’m wyse enow to know–too wyse to tel.”

HENRY JAMES’S VERSION:

She luminously wavered, and I tentatively inferred that she would soon perfectly reconsider her not altogether unobvious course. Furiously, tho’ with a tender, ebbing similitude, across her mental consciousness stole a reculmination of all the truths she had ever known concerning, or even remotely relating to, the not easily fathomed qualities of paste and ink. So she stood, focused in an intensity of soul-quivers, and I, all unrelenting, waited, though of a dim uncertainty whether, after all, it might not be only a dubitant problem.

SWINBURNE’S VERSION:

Shall I dip, shall I dip it, Dolores,
This luminous paste-brush of thine?
Shall I sully its white-breasted glories,
Its fair, foam-flecked figure divine?

O shall I–abstracted, unheeding–
Swish swirling this pen in my haste,
And, deaf to thy pitiful pleading,
Just jab it in paste?

STEPHEN CRANE’S VERSION:

I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
And I saw
Ranged in solemn row before me,
A paste-pot and an ink-pot.
I held in my either hand
A pen and a brush.
Ay, a pen and a brush.
Now this is the strange part;
I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
Glad, exultant,
Because
The choice was mine!
Ay, mine!
As I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire.