"On the line between life and death, at Kingfisher Lake, she breathed the fatal air and did not sink again. And there she lay, like Wisdom drawn up from the deep: as golden, and as quiet."
The Economist eulogizes Benson the carp. It's like poetry or something.
I wouldn't have thought The Economist had such a sense of humor (though a strangely reverent one, at that).
Despite (or perhaps because) it's written by fussy Tories, the Economist is consistently the funniest serious magazine around, if you find a certain dryness funny. For instance, in an otherwise straightforward piece about IBM's purchase of PriceWaterhouseCooper, they noted that "IBM announced that PWC Consulting will not change its name to 'Monday' as previously planned, in a blow to fans of risible rebranding everywhere."