A Cooking Egg
Pipit sate upright in her chair Some distance from where I was sitting; Views of the Oxford Colleges Lay on the table, with the knitting. Daguerreotypes and silhouettes, Her grandfather and great great aunts, Supported on the mantelpiece An Invitation to the Dance... I shall not want Honour in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other heroes of that kidney. I shall not want Capital in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond: We two shall lie together, lapt In a five per cent Exchequer Bond. I shall not want Society in Heaven, Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride; Her anecdotes will be more amusing Than Pipit's experience could provide. I shall not want Pipit in Heaven: Madame Blavatsky will instruct me In the Seven Sacred Trances; Piccarda de Donati will conduct me… But where is the penny world I bought To eat with Pipit behind the screen? The red-eyed scavengers are creeping From Kentish Town and Golder's Green; Where are the eagles and the trumpets? Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps. Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s
The title refers to eggs not good enough to eat by themselves and so reserved for cooking (in dishes).A Cooking Egg - meaning Summary
Afterlife Imagined with Irony
The speaker imagines a consoling, social heaven populated by historical and fictional figures, claiming he will lack neither honour, capital, nor society. These grand boasts sit alongside a modest domestic scene with Pipit and small comforts. The poem pivots when the narrator laments the loss of an everyday purchase needed to share food, exposing a yearning for immediate, mundane companionship that undercuts lofty promises of afterlife consolation.
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