Two Old Crows
Two Old Crows
Original Text
Vachel Lindsay, The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1917): 66-67. PS 3523 I58C5 Robarts Library. Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1923): 146-47.
1Two old crows sat on a fence rail.
2Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
3Thinking of effect and cause,
4Of weeds and flowers,
5And nature's laws.
6One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
7One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.
8Each of them thought far more than he uttered.
9One crow asked the other crow a riddle.
10One crow asked the other crow a riddle:
11The muttering crow
12Asked the stuttering crow,
13"Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?
14Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?"
15"Bee-cause," said the other crow,
16"Bee-cause,
17B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause."
18Just then a bee flew close to their rail: --
19"Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ."
20And those two black crows
21Turned pale,
22And away those crows did sail.
23Why?
24B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
25B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
26"Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ."
Publication Start Year
1915
Publication Notes
Tuck's Magazine (June 1915)
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme