THE POETS AT A HOUSE-PARTY
(A modern mortal having inadvertently stumbled in upon a house-party of poets given on Mount Olympus, being called upon to justify his presence there by writing a poem, offered a Limerick. Whereupon each poet scoffed, and the mortal, offended, challenged them to do better with the same theme)
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-traveler, 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 ink 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 the 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' version)
She luminously wavered, and I tentatively inferred that she would soon perfectly reconsider her not altogether unobvious course. Furiously, though with a tender, ebbing similitude, across her mental consciousness stole a re-culmination 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?
Or shall I—abstracted, unheeding—
Swish swirling this pen in my haste,
And, deaf to thy pitiful pleading,
Just jab it in paste?
(Eugene Field's version)
See the Ink Bottle on the Desk! It is full of Nice Black Ink. Why, the Paste-Pot is there, Too! Let us watch Papa as he sits down to write. Oh, he is going to paste a Second-hand Stamp on a Letter. See, he has dipped his Brush in the Ink by Mistake. Oh, what a Funny Mistake! Now, although it is Winter, we may have to Endure the Heated Term.
(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.
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.
(Mr. Dooley's version)
"I see by th' pa-apers, Hennessy," said Mr. Dooley, "that they'se a question up for dee-bate."
"What's a dee-bate?" asked Mr. Hennessy.
"Well, it's different from a fish-bait," returned Mr. Dooley, "an' it's like this, if I can bate it into the thick head of ye. A lot of people argyfies an' argyfies to decide, as in the prisint instance, whether a man'd rayther shtick his pastin'-brush in his ink-shtand, or if he'd like it betther to be afther dippin' his pen in his pashte-pot."
"Thot," said Mr. Hennessy, "is a foolish question, an' only fools wud argyfy about such a thing as thot."
"That's what makes it a dee-bate," said Mr. Dooley.
Carolyn Wells.