What have you done? Ye peaceful people, what
To merit death? You who have given us milk
In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat
Against the winter’s cold? And the plain Ox,
That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
In what has he offended? He, whose toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest—shall he bleed,
And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
E’en of the clowns he feeds, and that, perhaps,