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.