(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.