The Re-echo Club

Carolyn Wells

The Re-echo Club

DIVERSIONS OF THE RE-ECHO CLUB

A recent discovery has brought to light the long-hidden papers of the Re-Echo Club. This is a great find, and all lovers of masterpieces of the world's best literature will rejoice with us that we are enabled to publish herewith a few of these gems of great minds. Little is known of the locale or clientèle of this club, but it was doubtless a successor of the famous Echo Club of Boston memory, for, like that erudite body, it takes pleasure in trying to better what is done. On the occasion of the meeting of which the following gems of poesy are the result, the several members of the club engaged to write up the well-known tradition of the Purple Cow in more elaborate form than the quatrain made famous by Mr. Gelett Burgess:

"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."

The first attempt here cited is the production of Mr. John Milton:

Hence, vain, deluding cows.

The herd of folly, without color 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, thy visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight.

And though I'd like, just once, to see thee,

I never, never, never'd be thee!

MR. 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 color

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.

We look before and after

At cattle as they browse;

Our most hearty laughter

Something sad must rouse.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of Purple Cows.

MR. W. 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!

MR. T. GRAY:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;

I watched them slowly wend their weary way,

But, ah, a Purple Cow I did not see.

Full many a cow of purplest ray serene

Is haply grazing where I may not see;

Full many a donkey writes of her, I ween,

But neither of these creatures would I be.

MR. J. W. RILEY:

There, little Cow, don't cry!

You are brindle and brown, I know.

And with wild, glad hues

Of reds and blues,

You never will gleam and glow.

But though not pleasing to the eye,

There, little Cow, don't cry, don't cry.

LORD A. TENNYSON:

Ask me no more. A cow I fain would see

Of purple tint, like to a sun-soaked grape—

Of purple tint, like royal velvet cape—

But such a creature I would never be—

Ask me no more.

MR. R. 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!

MR. J. KEATS:

A cow of purple is a joy forever.

Its loveliness increases. I have never

Seen this phenomenon. Yet ever keep

A brave lookout; lest I should be asleep

When she comes by. For, though I would not be one,

I've oft imagined 'twould be joy to see one.

MR. D.G. ROSSETTI:

The Purple Cow strayed in the glade;

(Oh, my soul! but the milk is blue!)

She strayed and strayed and strayed and strayed

(And I wail and I cry Wa-hoo!)

I've never seen her—nay, not I;

(Oh, my soul! but the milk is blue!)

Yet were I that Cow I should want to die.

(And I wail and I cry Wa-hoo!)

But in vain my tears I strew.

MR. T.B. ALDRICH:

Somewhere in some faked nature place,

In Wonderland, in Nonsense Land,

Two darkling shapes met face to face,

And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" said each to each;

"Tell me your title, anyhow."

One said, "I am the Papal Bull,"

"And I the Purple Cow."

MR. E. ALLAN 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!

MR. H. LONGFELLOW:

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wing of night

As ballast is wafted downward

From an air-ship in its flight.

I dream of a purple creature

Which is not as kine are now;

And resembles cattle only

As Cowper resembles a cow.

Such cows have power to quiet

Our restless thoughts and rude;

They come like the Benedictine

That follows after food.

MR. A. SWINBURNE:

Oh, Cow of rare rapturous vision,

Oh, purple, impalpable Cow,

Do you browse in a Dream Field Elysian,

Are you purpling pleasantly now?

By the side of wan waves do you languish?

Or in the lithe lush of the grove?

While vainly I search in my anguish,

O Bovine of mauve!

Despair in my bosom is sighing,

Hope's star has sunk sadly to rest;

Though cows of rare sorts I am buying,

Not one breathes a balm to my breast.

Oh, rapturous rose-crowned occasion,

When I such a glory might see!

But a cow of a purple persuasion

I never would be.

MR. F.D. SHERMAN:

I'd love to see

A Purple Cow,

Oh, Goodness me!

I'd love to see

But not to be

One. Anyhow,

I'd love to see

A Purple Cow.

MR. B. CARMAN:

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these,

A Purple Cow that no one sees,

A grove of green and a sky of blue,

And never a hope that cow to view.

But a firm conviction deep in me

That cow I would rather be than see.

Though, alack-a-day, there be times enow,

When I see pink snakes and a Purple Cow.

MR. H.C. BUNNER:

Oh, what's the way to Arcady,

Where all the cows are purple?

Ah, woe is me! I never hope

On such a sight my eyes to ope;

But, as I sing in merry glee

Along the road to Arcady,

Perchance full soon I may espy

A Purple Cow come dancing by.

Heigho! I then shall see one.

Her horns bedecked with ribbons gay,

And garlanded with rosy may,—

A tricksy sight. Still I must say

I'd rather see than be one.

MR. R.L. STEVENSON:

In winter I get up at night

And hunt that cow by lantern light;

In summer quite the other way,

I seek a Purple Cow by day.

And does it not seem strange to you,

I can't find cows of purple hue?

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I'm glad I'm not a Purple Cow.

MR. R. KIPLING:

In the old ten-acre pasture,

Lookin' eastward toward a tree,

There's a Purple Cow a-settin'

And I know she thinks of me.

For the wind is in the gum-tree,

And the hay is in the mow,

And the cow-bells are a-calling

"Come and see a Purple Cow!"

But I am not going now,

Not at present, anyhow,

For I am not fond of purple, and

I can't abide a cow;

No, I shall not go to-day,

Where the Purple Cattle play,

Though I think I'd rather see one

Than to be one, anyhow.

MR. O. HERFORD:

Children, observe the Purple Cow,

You cannot see her, anyhow;

And, little ones, you need not hope

Your eyes will e'er attain such scope.

But if you ever have a choice

To be, or see, lift up your voice

And choose to see. For surely you

Don't want to browse around and moo.

MR. S. CRANE:

Once a man said,

I never saw a Purple Cow;

Again he spoke,

I never hope to see one.

Then all the people said,

How noble his humble-mindedness!

How glorious his meek resignation!

Now this is the strange part—

The man has seen hundreds of purple cows,

Ay, thousands,

But the man was color blind,

And the cows seemed to him to be a reddish brown.

MR. D.G. ROSSETTI:

(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 m