[688] The Yak

As a friend to the children
  commend me the Yak.
You will find it exactly the thing:
  It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,
Or lead it about with a string.

The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Thibet
  (A desolate region of snow)
Has for centuries made it a nursery pet,
  And surely the Tartar should know!
Then tell you papa where the Yak can be got,
  And if he is awfully rich
He will buy you the creature --
  or else
    he will not.
(I cannot be positive which.)


 	-- Hillaire Belloc

Another delightful little poem from Belloc's "The Bad Child's Book of
Beasts". While the poem as a whole is certainly worth a read, those of you
familiar with my taste in poetry will be unsurprised to learn that I'm
running it mainly for the ending <g>.

Links:

poem #124 , the previous poem we've run from "The Bad Child's Book of
Beasts", has a biography of Belloc.

We've run several of his other poems too, though no other children's poem -
see http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet.html

Afterthought:

A nice companion piece to today's poem would be Frank Jacobs' poem about the
Yak, which ran in Mad. I'll run it sometime if I can dig up a copy.

-martin

From: "Ajit  Narayanan" <ajitq@>

> A nice companion piece to today's poem would be Frank Jacobs' poem about
the
> Yak, which ran in Mad. I'll run it sometime if I can dig up a copy.

Uhh, that would be

The Yak

The yak sits like a mammoth mop,
A shaggy apparition;
He won't go near a barber shop
And runs from the beautician;
He bellows with a dreadful roar,
But, still, he won't attack us;
He's much too busy looking for
A young, seductive yakess!


ajit Q.