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!

The velvet-coated beauties do not languish

Beneath the morning’s golden light that ’s breaking,

The unexhausted spring of life awaking,

Their golden eyes of velvet full of anguish.

They patiently endure their pains. Bestowing

Their sympathy, the other cows are ruing

Their unproductive udders, and renewing

At milking-time their labor and their lowing.

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,

And feel so warm with dripping white and flossy.

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!