THE PURPLE COW. I have posted here about how my father–like the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table–liked to recite poems or parts of poems at the dinner table: “HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE, SHERIDAN’S RIDE, ‘The stag at eve had drunk his fill….’†I mentioned here that another of the poems he would recite was “Ozymandias.” I think that the only poem he recited as often as he recited “The World is so Full of a Number of Things” was “The Purple Cow.” Here is the text:
“I never saw a purple cow;
I never hope to see one;
but I can tell you anyhow;
I’d rather see than be one!”
The purple cow is the mascot of Williams College.
A lot better mascot than, say, a wildcat. Maybe better than the “Fighting Sand Crabs.”