Recently I ran across a reference to the poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant” by John Godfrey Saxe (although for the life of me I can’t remember where), and it reminded me of the little-known final stanza of the poem. It’s little known because it’s never been published; I discovered it written in invisible ink on the back of Saxe’s original manuscript, hidden away in the depths of a dark, deserted Indostani library and protected by a wall, a man with a spear, a snake, a tree, and (for some reason) a guy wielding a rope and a fan. Or at least, I think it was. Like I said, it was dark. Anyway, here ’tis, published for the first time:
The seventh man of Indostan
Just listened to them brawl,
And sighed, “These fools cannot agree,
Their minds are far too small.
From their dispute it’s plain that there’s
No elephant at all!”