At this the Tiger shriek’d with rage
(The while his Secret’ry the Fox,
Took papers from his office box),
‘Unhappy land! accursed age!’
He cried, ‘You seek to murder me
With weight of brute Majority;
And me not only, but the cause
Of Pity, Justice, and the Laws!
Take back the charges you impute;
It is not me but you who do’t.
When we controll’d the Sov’reign’s land
The sun was bright, the breeze was bland.
The roving Heifer, free from care,
Scarce needed sniff th’ untainted air
For danger, and the young Gazelle
Drank heedless at the hidden well;
And even I with happy smile
Would lay me down to slumber, while
The careless Lambkins gambol’d round,
And Peace and Plenty blest the ground!
With this fine eloquence inflamed
The rival factions loudly named
Each other Brute, and (it is said)
Would soon have killed each other dead:
But now the Boar with growl and grunt
And bristling juba leapt to front.
‘Accursed both!’ he cried. ‘What, what!
Think you, ye fools, we know you not?
Each canting, lying partisan,
Who prates of Mercy and the Law
With merciless and murd’rous maw,
Will always eat us when he can—
Us, who with boon and bloodless toil
Seek but the acorns for our spoil—
Were not our eyes and tushes bright
To quell such bandits of the night.
Why, e’en the Monarch—’
Here a roar
From all the Council check’d the Boar;
And soon the King with pensive mien
Said, ‘This is not the way, I ween
To reach the truth—more difficult
Than we supposed. Let us consult
Our learned Judge, Lord Elephant.’
So he advances, complaisant
With rocky brow, and at his ear
A pen as long as any spear;
Small eyes that saw behind the Truth
Convenience; and, as if to soothe
Dissention, with a swaying motion
From side to side. ‘Sire, I’ve a notion,’
He said, ‘there is no case at all.
The plaintiff can no witness call,
And hers the only evidence,
Which, rightly sifted, has no sense.
For in the night she says he took
Her first, her second in the brook.
How could she see him in the dark?
And for the second, pray you mark,
Perhaps it was more likely drown’d.
As for the third, when she look’d round,
He’d gone: how did she know him then?
This is of fancy, not of ken.
Moreover, in th’ alternative,
Sir Wolf can plead he could not live
Because the din the lambkins made
About him slumb’ring in the shade.
As for the much-bereaved Dame,
With whom I deeply sympathise—
Such sorrow wets my foolish eyes—
I fear she may be thought to blame
Because she troubled Majesty
Before she had instructed me
(Of course I ridicule the fee);
And I should be prepared, in short,
To hear it argued in the Court
Whether she did not bring the charge
In order merely to discharge
An ancient grudge against her foe—’
‘Enough! and let the prisoner go!’
The Sov’reign said. ‘And as for you,
Dishonest and malignant Ewe,
We do not order you to death
(Whate’er your conduct meriteth)
Only because it pleaseth us
To show we are magnanimous.’
(He was indeed much praised for that,
And more because the Sheep was fat).
‘Break up the Court. Enough of worry,
It’s time to dine, so let’s be merry.’
With that they shifted in a hurry;
But in the scramble no one knew
(So says the Saga that is true)
What happen’d to the Piteous Ewe.
[The Contest of Birds]
Dedicated to all the Excellent
The Eagle which at Jove’s right hand
Was wont to take imperial stand,
Proud of his perch, and with fond beak
The Thund’rer’s fondling finger tweak,
Or blinking in sage thought t’ assume
Half sov’reignty and weigh the doom,
Was sick; for the World he sigh’d,
His Mountains and his Forests wide;
So true it is, not Jove’s right hand
Is worth to us our Native Land,
And that the Little we have not
Can make the Much we have forgot.
Therefore to earth with arching vans,
Released a while, the sky he spans
In flight; sinks thro’ the tempest; takes
The feather-fretting aid of wind;
And now, new born with pleasure, breaks
Upon a beauteous Vale confined.