Pastoral Homily

That humble little bloom, the Scarlet Pimpernel, long since made romantic in song and story, is now suspected by experts of being the cause of widespread mortality amongst dairy cattle in certain rural districts.

In the old home paddock
Stood a Cow,
Chewing.
What did she care
What men out there
In a war-crazed world were doing?
She watched the soft cloud-shadows pass,
She cropped the grass,
She chewed her cud;
No rancours fired, with pride of class,
Her sluggish blood.
Pursuing
Her placid way,
Whene’er her peace
Some surplus energy disturbed
She either kept it safely curbed,
Or found release
In moo-ing.

Thought she:
“I’m individualist,
Nor Nazi creed nor Communist
Uprising
Stirs me to actions rashly hot.
Which, when you know me well,
Is not
Surprising.
I am a most contented cow.
Why should I worry, anyhow?
Amazing
To me is all this human strife.
I find all that I seek of life
In grazing.”

Now, at her feet, as it befell,
A little Scarlet Pimpernel,
Lowly and humble,
Looked up and said,
“I am a Red!
Poor Cow, you mumble
Of things you do not understand.
We would reshape this stricken land,
And my kind
For ever find
You clumsy beasts, whose great hooves thrust
Our faces downward in the dust,
Too long encumber
The pleasant earth on which we dwell.
Cow, have a care! Each Pimpernel
Has got your number.”

“Well,” smiled the Cow. “Just have your way.
I might be, as you rashly say,
A clumsy plodder.
You might be right.
Also, you might
Make decent fodder” . . .
She stooped and cropped the Pimpernel—
A cow-like frolic—
And soon thereafter felt unwell;
A touch of colic.

That night an apathetic moon
Viewed her undoing.
“Content,” she sang, “may be a boon;
But careless chewing
May not at all times serve us well
Who base false pride on
Gross ignorance. Ah, Pimpernel,
You take the trick. Farewell! Farewell!
Now the cold stars my requiem croon.”
And that’s the tune
The old Cow died on.

The moral is: Don’t
Be a cow.
Or, if you must be,
Anyhow,
Take heed of this sad tale I tell
And never eat
A Pimpernel.