I was asked, in the spirit of Purim, to write a eulogy for three goldfish that met their untimely demise last week. I complied, and the following bit of doggerel--or rather, fisherel--is the result. You might chuckle, and then all will be good.
An Eulogy Delivered on the Death Most Horrible of Three Noble Fish, in Registers Divers and Poeticall
As it has been observed by the learned and travelled Pliny that it is the tendency of fish, upon their death, to first float near the surface of the water and then, by degrees, to sink, which observation has since been corroborated by the sciences of our day; and as the eminent Mr. Pope observes in his Essay on Criticism that the poetic art must imitate nature; we have therefore adhered most carefully to the guidance of the same on the attainment of Bathos, or Sinking, in poetry, and present the following eulogy which, it will be observed, resembles both poetically and naturally a fish that has recently died, for as the eulogy proceeds poetically upwards it proceeds, by contrast and likeness simultaneously, as the fish does, downward, to a full realization of the
Bathetic style.
(The poet begins in the vulgar style of itinerant players and schoolchildren)
Three fishies died one day last week
Each fishy life had reached its peak
And when their bowl began to reek
We spilled them in a nearby creek
(Here is a more affected style of that same sort, but aspiring to some poesy)
We laughed at your foibles
At your sorrows, we cried
You took some part of us
With you when you died
Calpurnia, Bob,
And angelic Melissa—
So little we knew ye,
But how much we’ll miss ya!
(Thence the poet ascends to the higher style of our great authors)
Who like Calpurnia knew to dive and roll,
Who dared like Bob the dread edge of the bowl
And who in all the reefs of Australy,
Could as Melissa swim circularly!
False adage, “many fish are in the sea”,
True of the many, but not of The Three!
Alas, we’ll only see their like again,
Ensconced in fathoms of the starry main,
Till fair Callista from her sparkling hand,
Send them once more to seas by this our land.
(With greater pathos)
Say not one fish, two fish,
Say not red fish, blue fish!
The spirit of Piscis
Dwelt ne’er but in you fish!
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