Cows and Courtship on the Farm 39 



member that nursery rhyme, "Consider, good 

 cow, consider." 



MUCH BUTTER-FAT IN HIS POETRY 



They used to have a poet in Oxford, Canada's 

 banner dairying county, whose poetry was said 

 to have more butter-fat to the line than any other 

 rhymster could skim from off his think-tank. He 

 published a volume of rhyme about cows, and 

 curds and cream. He was the laureate of the 

 dairy and the cow poet par excellence. Consider 

 the ethical quality of this verselet from his pen: 



"The cow is a kindly creature ! 

 Kind and gentle in each feature, 

 About her is a homely charm, 

 And her the dog should not alarm. 

 But let all guard her from harm, 

 The gentlest creature on the farm.*' 



Even that prince of romance, Eobert Louis 

 Stevenson, turned aside from the ways of pirates 

 and bloodthirsty adventurers into the old cow path 

 that ran crooked to the woods. He it was who 

 wrote verses entitled "The Friendly Cow." 



And that writer of exquisitely beautiful essays 

 on nature, John Burroughs, has a charming prose- 

 poem entitled, "Our Eural Divinity" — the cow. 



Have I made good my presumptuous folly of 

 naming cows and courtship in the same allitera- 

 tive line? 



