I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
And I saw
Ranged in solemn row before me,
A paste-pot and an ink-pot.
I held in my either hand
A pen and a brush.
Ay, a pen and a brush.
Now this is the strange part;
I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
Glad, exultant,
Because
The choice was mine!
Ay, mine!
As I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable occasions was the night when the
members of the Re-Echo Club discussed the merits of the classic poem:
Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her;
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.
In many ways this historic narrative called forth admiration. One must
admit Peter's great strength of character, his power of quick decision,
and immediate achievement. Some held that his inability to retain the
lady's affection in the first place argued a defect in his nature; but
remembering the lady's youth and beauty (implied by the spirit of the
whole poem), they could only reiterate their appreciation of the way he
conquered circumstances, and proved himself master of his fate, and
captain of his soul! Truly, the Pumpkin-Eaters must have been a forceful
race, able to defend their rights and rule their people.
The Poets at their symposium unanimously felt that the style of the
poem, though hardly to be called crude, was a little bare, and they took
up with pleasure the somewhat arduous task of rewriting it.
* * * * *
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: