"Don't hit him, Jenny!" Doris cried:
"The race of wasps is much belied;
I must recant what I have said,—
Wasps are remarkably well bred."
Away Sir Sting fled, and went boasting
Amongst his fellows—Doris toasting;
And as his burgundy he sips,
He showed the sugar on his lips.
Away the greedy host then gathered,
Where they thought dalliance fair was feathered.
They fluttered round her, sipped her tea,
And lived in quarters fair and free;
Nor were they banished, till she found
That wasps had stings and felt the wound.
FABLE IX.
The Bull and the Mastiff.
Deem you to train your son and heir,
For his preceptor then take care;
To sound his mind your cares employ,
E'er you commit to him your boy.
Once on a time on native plain
A bull enjoyed a native reign.
A mastiff, stranger there, with ire
Beheld the bull, with eyes of fire.
The bovine monarch, on his part,
Spurned up the dust with dauntless heart,
Advised the mastiff to think twice,
And asked—if lust or avarice,
From which, in main, contention springs,
Caused him to break the peace of kings?
The mastiff answered him, 'twas glory—
To emulate the sons of story;
Told him that Cæsar was his sire,
And he a prince baptized in fire;
That rifles and the mitrailleur
Had thrown his bosom in a stir.
"Accursed cur!" the bull replied,
"Delighting in the sanguine tide:
If you are Revolution trained,
Doubtless your paws with blood are stained—
Demons that take delight in slaughter,
And pour out human blood as water—
Take then thy fate." With goring wound
The monarch tossed him from the ground
In air gyrating—on the stones
He fell a mass of broken bones.
FABLE X.
Elephant and Bookseller.
The traveller whose undaunted soul
Sails o'er the seas from pole to pole
Sees many wonders, which become
So wonderful they strike one dumb,
When we in their description view
Monsters which Adam never knew.
Yet, on the other hand, the sceptic
Supplies his moral antiseptic;
Denying unto truths belief,
With groans which give his ears relief:
But truth is stranger far than fiction,
And outlives sceptic contradiction.
Read Pliny or old Aldrovandus,
If—they would say—you understand us.
Let other monsters stand avaunt,
And read we of the elephant.
As one of these, in days of yore,
Rummaged a stall of antique lore
Of parchment rolls—not modern binding—
He found a roll; the which unwinding,
He saw all birds and beasts portrayed
Which Nature's bounteous hand had made,
With forms and sentiments, to wit—
All by the hand of man down writ.
The elephant, with great attention,
Remarked upon that great invention: