Mr. Ed Poe opined that there was lack of atmosphere, and that the facts of the narrative called for a more impressive setting. He therefore offered:
The skies, they were ashen and sober,
The lady was shivering with fear;
Her shoulders were shud'ring with fear,
On a dark night in dismal October,
Of his most Matrimonial Year.
It was hard by the cornfield of Auber,
In the musty Mud Meadows of Weir,
Down by the dank frog-pond of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted cornfield of Weir.
Now, his wife had a temper Satanic,
And when Peter roamed here with his Soul,
Through the corn with his conjugal Soul,
He spied a huge pumpkin Titanic,
And he popped her right in through a hole.
Then solemnly sealed up the hole.
And thus Peter Peter has kept her
Immured in Mausoleum gloom,
A moist, humid, damp sort of gloom.
And, though there's no doubt he bewept her,
She is still in her yellow-hued tomb,
Her unhallowed, Hallowe'en tomb
And ever since Peter side-stepped her,
He calls her his lost Lulalume,
His Pumpkin-entombed Lulalume.
This was received with acclaim, but many objected to the mortuary theory.
Mrs. Robert Browning was sure that Peter's love for his wife, though perhaps that of a primitive man, was of the true Portuguese stamp, and with this view composed the following pleasing Sonnet:
How do I keep thee? Let me count the ways.
I bar up every breadth and depth and height
My hands can reach, while feeling out of sight
For bolts that stick and hasps that will not raise.
I keep thee from the public's idle gaze,
I keep thee in, by sun or candle light.
I keep thee, rude, as women strive for Right.
I keep thee boldly, as they seek for praise,
I keep thee with more effort than I'd use
To keep a dry-goods shop or big hotel.
I keep thee with a power I seemed to lose
With that last cook. I'll keep thee down the well,
Or up the chimney-place! Or if I choose,
I shall but keep thee in a Pumpkin shell.
This was, of course, meritorious, though somewhat suggestive of the cave-men, who, we have never been told, were Pumpkin Eaters.
Austin Dobson's version was really more lady-like: