All Right Then

THOMAS MORAN : UNDER THE REDWALL
HOW WOLVES CHANGE RIVERS

One thing that literature
would be greatly
the better for
would be a more
restricted employment
by the authors
of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races,
be they Greeks, Romans,
Teutons or Celts,
can't seem just to say
that anything is the thing it is
but have to go out of their way
to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
that the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
to know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian,
it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy
and thus hinder longevity,
we'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts
were gleaming in purple and gold,
just what does the poet mean when he says
he came down like a wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
there are great many things.
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf
with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian
was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof.
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail
and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely,
and all you were entitled to say, at the very most,
was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like
a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no,
he had to invent a lot of figures of speech
and then interpolate them, with the result that
whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that
a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time
by poets from Homer to Tennyson.
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
and they always say things like that the snow
is a white blanket after a winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then,
you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow
and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical
blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm,
and after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
what I mean by too much metaphor and simile.
--Ogden Nash
Very Like a Whale

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 70 YEARS,
A WOLF HAS BEEN SPOTTED AT THE GRAND CANYON