Page 32 - Poetry-Animals

And Greece and Babylon were amid;
You have tenanted many a royal dome,
And dwelt in the oldest pyramid;
The source of the Nile!—O, you have been there!
In the ark was your floodless bed;
On the moonless night of Marathon
You crawled o’er the mighty dead;
But still, though I reverence your ancestries,
I don’t see why you should nibble my peas.

The meadows are yours—the hedgerow and brook,
You may bathe in their dews at morn;
By the aged sea you may sound your shells,
On the mountains erect your horn;
The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers,
Then why—in the name of wonder—
Should my six pea-rows be the only cause
To excite your midnight plunder?

I have never disturbed your slender shells;
You have hung round my aged walk;
And each might have sat, till he died in his fat,
Beneath his own cabbage-stalk:
But now you must fly from the soil of your sires;
Then put on your liveliest crawl.
And think of your poor little snails at home,
Now orphans or emigrants all.

Utensils domestic and civil and social
I give you an evening to pack up;
But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight,
To-morrow I’ll hang each man Jack up.
You’ll think of my peas and your thievish tricks,
With tears of slime, when crossing the Styx.

—(Crown Jewels, 1887)

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