The fox was the first to arise to his feet,
To announce that his own mind was made up complete;
He seized the occasion his own reputation
To clear of a cloud of ill-got defamation
Alleging that he had habitually crept
Round henroosts, at midnight, when honest folk slept;
Which libel had darkened his whole life's existence,
And made it much harder to gain a subsistence;
He thought it a shame that a poor tempted sinner,
Like him, should thus suffer for getting his dinner.
While he spake, his eyes rested, in manner abiding,
Upon the slim neck of the peacock presiding,
Which ruffled its feathers and spread out its tail,
Though feeling itself round the gills growing pale.
The next to express an opinion, invoked
By the peacock presiding, the toad gruffly croaked
His belief that beneath stillest tongue there lay hid,
Most often, the softest and tenderest quid;
For his part, he thought that the ostrich inclined
To lay too much stress on his power of mind;
VII.
In solemn convocation met, stand the mighty men of our realm, with the policy of the bull, of the bear, of the wolf and of the fox, each animal, according to the nature of its disposition, awaiting the opportunity of power and spoliation, by which he may grasp and hold to himself, as his own personal increment, all that can be wrested from the state and humanity at large. The state, itself, in principle wise, majestic and supreme, petitions peace of the leering devil, who constantly juggles with the tape of human selfishness, as waiting angels record the devious courses that nations and individuals take.
Behold, how pressed on all sides is the man of the hour in the grasp of the huge, overbrooding, material powers of self-interest.
VIII.
Confusion still reigns, but labor has risen from the cross and comes to legislation. He dreams of conquests that are chimerical, where the shadowy knight of honor contests the field with the disgruntled spirit of melancholy, who pessimistically broods the unhatched egg of arbitration. Agitators and agitations still hold sway, while Satan in their midst dominates the human idea of progress and reform with the accursed principle of Self, that is in itself Self-destroying.