Eliot Among the Bovines

The BBC presented a programme on T. S. Eliot the other evening, which disclosed a previously unpublished poem by Eliot. The poem is about cows. Eliot didn't like them. At all. In fact, they seem to have made him distinctly nervous:

You may reply, to fear a Cow
Is Cowardice the rustic scorns;
But still your reason must allow
That I am weak, and she has horns.

True that. Okay, the poem is absolutely tongue-in-cheek, but, having walked alone through fields full of grazing cows, who lift their heads to stare, I concur that it can be quite unnerving.

I've been in the city too long.