Everywhere are pastoral nouns in “s”,
Swishing their tails, impassible and rural;
Musk oxen browse with sibilant excess,
While cattle is singular as a plural.
Children are ancient, oxen — a chimera;
Once they lived among their kith and kin,
Multiple creatures ending all with “en”,
Survivors now of a linguistic era.
More than one child who was playing
Is suddenly summoned and admonished,
For more than one ox he watched is straying;
Implausible endings fail to astonish.
Exceptions were once the common stock;
Each relic was an ordinary word;
Penned-in thoughts and fluttering talk,
Ruminants and flocks,
Filled the yard, their quaintness still unheard.
NOTES for Students of English
Sibilant – A hissing sound like “s,” referring to the “sk” and “x” sounds in the pronunciation of “musk ox.”
“Singular as a plural” – A play on the word “singular” which means both “only one, the opposite of plural” and “distinctive, peculiar.” The noun “cattle” is unusual in English in that although it is a plural form, it does not end in “s.”
“Children are ancient” – This paradoxical statement and the whole second stanza refer to the fact that in modern English the few nouns with plural forms that end in “en” instead of “s” (oxen, children, and the poetic brethren ) are vestiges of an old Anglo-Saxon noun declension.
Ruminants – A play on the two meanings of ruminant: 1) someone who ponders; and 2) a cow, a sheep, a goat, an ox, or another related hoofed mammal having a complex stomach.