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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