THE PLATYPUS
by: Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
- Y child,
the Duck-billed Platypus
- A sad example sets for us:
- From him we learn how Indecision
- Of character provokes Derision.
- This vacillating Thing, you see,
- Could not decide which he would be,
- Fish, Flesh or Fowl, and chose all three.
- The scientists were sorely vexed
- To classify him; so perplexed
- Their brains, that they, with Rage at bay,
- Called him a horrid name one day,--
- A name that baffles, frights and shocks us,
- Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus.
"The Platypus" is reprinted
from A Nonsense Anthology. Ed. Carolyn Wells. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915. |
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POEMS BY OLIVER HERFORD |
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