Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume V. Nature. 1904. | | | | VI. Animate Nature | | Fodder-Time | | Elisabeth, Queen of Roumania (Carmen Sylva) (1843–1916) |
| | From the German by John Eliot Bowen
From “Songs of Toil”
HOW sweet the manger smells! The cows all listen | |
| With outstretched necks, and with impatient lowing; | |
| They greet the clover, their content now showing— | |
| And how they lick their noses till they glisten! | |
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| The velvet-coated beauties do not languish | 5 |
| Beneath the morning’s golden light that ’s breaking, | |
| The unexhausted spring of life awaking, | |
| Their golden eyes of velvet full of anguish. | |
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| They patiently endure their pains. Bestowing | |
| Their sympathy, the other cows are ruing | 10 |
| Their unproductive udders, and renewing | |
| At milking-time their labor and their lowing. | |
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| And now I must deceive the darling bossy,— | |
| With hand in milk must make it suck my finger. | |
| Its tender lips cling close like joys that linger, | 15 |
| And feel so warm with dripping white and flossy. | |
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| This very hand my people with devotion | |
| Do kiss,—which paints and plays and writes, moreover,— | |
| I would it had done naught but pile the clover | |
| To feed the kine that know no base emotion! | 20 | | | |
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