Explore "The Turtle" by Oliver Herford on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I never wasted any love / On turtles, but the turtle-dove / Is quite another thing; / When I have nothing else to do, / I love to hear them bill and coo / While mating in the spring.
There's something in their plaintive note / That brings a lump into my throat / And makes my pulses stir; / Something between a smothered snore / And the shrill creaking of a door, / That soothes me, as it were.
How strange is Nature's alchemy, / To think that living in the sea / Should change a creature so! / The turtle of the finny kind / That swims the sea, is to my mind / The lowest of the low.
And yet, O inconsistency! / Although the turtle is to me / A most obnoxious beast, / When on a menu card I spy / "Green Turtle, Soup," though it comes high, / I take two plates at least!