Page 11 - Poetry-Animals

Natural History of the Peacock

The peacock sits perched on the roof all night,
And wakes up the farm-house before ‘t is light;
But his matins they suit not the delicate ear
Of the drowsy damsels that half in fear
And half in disgust his discord hear.
If the soul’s migration from frame to frame
Be truth, tell me now when the peacock’s came?
Say if it had birth at the musical close
Of a dying hyena,—or if it arose
From a Puritan scold that sang psalms through her nose?
Well: a jackass there was—but you need not look
For this fable of mine in old Aesop’s book—
That one complaint all his life had whined,
How Nature had been either blind or unkind
To give him an aspect so unrefined.

“ ‘T is cruel,” he groaned, “that I cannot escape
From the vile prison-house of this horrible shape:
So gentle a temper as mine to shut in
This figure uncouth and so shaggy a skin,
And then these long ears!—it’s a shame and a sin.”
Good-natured Jove his upbraidings heard,
And changed the vain quadruped into a bird,
And garnished his plumage with many a spot
Of ineffable hue, such as earth wears not,—
For he dipped him into the rainbow-pot.
So dainty he looked in his gold and green
That the monarch presented the bird to his queen,
Who, taken with colors as most ladies are,
Had him harnessed straight to her crystal car
Wherein she travels from star to star.
But soon as his thanks the poor dissonant thing
Began to bray forth when he strove to sing,
“Poor creature!” quoth Jove, “spite of all my pains,

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