February 11, 2004

• Every now and then, I crack myself up.  This is one of my favorite posts ever and it's been over a year since I posted it here.  So if you remember it, please pretend like it's fresh ...

  
  

  Diversions of the Echo Club

  
  

  This club attempts to make better that which has already been done. On the occasion of the writing of the following gems, each member chose the style of his or her favorite poet to rework the ideas made famous by Mr. Gelett Burgess (who’s original poem appears last.)  I wrote two of these - can you tell which?

  
  

  In the style of John Milton

  
  

  Hence, vain deluding cows.
  The herd of folly, without colour bright,
  How little you delight,
  Or fill the Poet’s mind, or songs arouse!
  But, hail! Thou goddess gay of feature!
  Hail, divinest purple creature!
  Oh, Cow, they visage is too bright
  To hit the sense of human sight.
  And though I’d like, just once to see thee,
  I’d never, never, never’d be thee!

  
  

  . . . P. Bysshe Shelley

  
  

  Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
  Cow thou never wert;
  But in life to cheer it
  Playest thy full part
  In purple lines of unpremeditated art!
  The pale purple colour
  Melts around thy sight
  Like a star but duller,
  In the broad daylight.
  I’d see thee, but I would not be thee if I might.

  
  

  . . . William Wordsworth

  
  

  
  

  She dwelt among the untrodden ways
  Beside the springs of Dee;
  A Cow whom there were few to praise
  And very few to see.
  A violet by a mossy stone
  Greeting the smiling East
  Is not so purple I must own,
  As that erratic beast.
  She lived unknown, that Cow, and so
  I never chanced to see;
  But if I had to be one, oh!
  The difference to me!

  
  

  
  

  . . . Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  
  

  
  

  Ask me no more. A cow I fain would see
  Of purple tint, like a sun-soaked grape –
  Of purple tint, like royal velvet cape –
  But such a creature I would never be –
  Ask me no more.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  . . . William Shakespeare

  
  

  Let not to the vision of two bovines
  Admit impediment, Sight is not sight
  Which falters when it coloration finds
  Or blinks when the cloud cover doth remove
  O, no! It is an ever fixed stare,
  That looks on purple, and is never shaken,
  It is the light that calls the violet there,
  Upon the hide, the leather yet unmade
  For lavender into purse, shoes and belt
  The artist mind doth slowly come to see
  That cow of ‘maginations purple pelt
  But no one may prove Bessie there to be
       Yet I would fain her existence to prove
       Before I’d walk me upon her purple hooves.

  
  

  . . . Robert Browning

  
  

  All that I know of a certain Cow
  Is it can throw, somewhere, somehow,
  Now a dart of red, now a dart of blue
  (That makes purple, ‘tis said).
  I would fain see, too.
  This Cow that darkles the red and the blue!

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  . . . John Keats

  
  

  A cow of purple is a joy forever.
  Its loveliness increases, I have never
  Seen this phenomenon. Yet ever keep
  A lookout; lest I should be asleep
  When she comes by. For though I would not
  be one,
  I’ve oft imagined ‘twould be a joy to see one.

  
  

  
  

  . . . Edgar Allen Poe

  
  

  Open then I flung a shutter,
  And with many a flirt and flutter,
  In there stepped a Purple Cow which gayly
  tripped around my floor.
  Not the least obeisance made she,
  Not a moment stopped or stayed she,
  But with mien of chorus lady perched herself
  above my door.

  
  

  On a dusty bust of Dante perched and sat above my door.
  And that Purple Cow unflitting
  Still is sitting – still is sitting
  On that dusty bust of Dante just above my chamber door,

  
  

  And her horns have all the seeming
  Of a demon’s that is screaming,
  And the arc-light o’er her streaming
  Casts her shadow on the floor.
  And my soul from out that pool of Purple
  shadow on the floor,
  Shall be lifted Nevermore!

  
  

  . . . e e cummings

  
  

  what,
   if a munch; of a crunch ... of a hay
  gives to the tooth what does not to the eye
         dot the i *)
  that purple beast never :sighted by me
  hay day purple may cow say i nay
  blow wind across the red, blue, indigo
  the breath !of the cow purple! wind blow
  never see, never be, never me,
  no.

  
  

  Original Text . . .

  
  

  I never saw a purple cow,
  I never hope to see one
  But I can tell you anyhow,
  I’d rather see than be one.

  
  

  And the much later addition of the second verse . . .

  
  

  Yes I penned the purple cow,
  I'm sorry now I wrote it,
  And I can tell you anyhow,
  I'll kill you if you quote it.

  • 6:17 pm
  • 9 Comments