DE ANIMABUS BRUTORUM.
No doubt 'twere heresy, or something worse
Than aught that priests call worthy of damnation,
Should I maintain, though in a sportive verse,
That bird or fish can e'er attain salvation;
Yet some have held that they are all possess'd,
And may be damn'd, although they can't be bless'd.
Such doctrine broach'd Antonio Margerita,
A learned Spaniard, mighty metaphysical.
To him the butterfly had seem'd a Lytta,—
His wasp-stung wits were grown so quaint and phthisical;
To him the sweetest song of Philomel
Had talk'd of nothing in the world but hell.
Heaven save us all from such a horrid dream!
Nor let the love of heaven,—of heaven, forsooth!—
Make hard our hearts, that we should so blaspheme
God for Christ's sake, and lie for love of truth.
Poor Tray! art thou indeed a mere machine,
Whose vital power is a spirit unclean?
If all the lives that throng the air and earth,
And swarm innumerous in the slimy deep,
Die once for all, and have no second birth,—
If, ceasing once, they do not even sleep,
But are no more than sounds of yesterday,
Or rainbow tints that come and pass away,—
Yet are they not to loving Nature lost;
She doth but take them to herself again!
The curious pencilling of moonlit frost
Melts in the morning ray, and leaves no stain;
Yet every drop preserved distils in showers,
And winds along the path of dewy flowers.
Nor shall they all in their oblivion lie,
Nor lack the life, though vain that life may be,
Which breathes in strains that wasting time defy:
A poet's song can memorise a flea;
The subtle fancy of deep-witted Donne,
The wee phlebotomist descanted on.
And once that strenuous insect leap'd by chance
Upon the white breast of a Gallic dame;
Forthwith the wits of universal France
Vied to consign the happy flea to fame!
Pasquier, the gravest joker of his age,
Berhymed La Puce in many a polished page.
The Teian bard, so skittish and so hoary,
That loved so well all things that merry be,
In honied phrases gave to blithest glory
The shrill cicada chirping cheerily;
The bloodless songster drunk with balmy dew,
Whose happy being every year is new.
That sad old wag, that Peter Pindar hight,
Who was no worshipper of William Pitt's,
Did whilome soar a bold Pindaric flight
To celebrate the progeny of nitts,
Telling how once a creature without wings
The crown invaded of the best of kings.
The insect empress, and her clustering throng
Of chemists, famed for geometric skill,
Have lent their laboured sweets to Virgil's song,
Their stings bequeathed to wicked Mandeville;
Wealthy as Tyre their homes, the more their sorrow,
Like Tyre despoiled, and smothered like Gomorrah.
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and be wise!”
So said the amorous king that wrote of hyssop,—
You know the rest. Nothing that creeps or flies
Reads half so good a lesson in all Æsop.
Great Johnson has berhymed the words; I swear,
He'd better far have left them as they were.
No question you have heard of Virgil's gnat,
Which by our gentle Spenser was transmuted,
Though probably I need not tell you that
Its authenticity is much disputed;
And 'tis denied also by judgments nice
That Homer ever sung of frogs and mice.
If Homer did not, some one did, I'm sure;
The tale is extant in the choicest Greek.
Can living tongue express, in phrase so pure,
The deep bass croak, and shriller treble squeak?
And Aristophanes no title lacks
To his brekekekek koax koax.
But thou dark dweller of the central rock,
Spawned ere avenging waves the hills o'erflowed,
Survivor of full many an earthquake's shock,
Last of the Troglodytes, primæval toad,
Like antique virtue, hated upon earth,
Or trampled under foot, like modest worth,—
Time was (or else our ancestors were liars)
That thou to mystic verse wert not unknown,
When witches danced around Tartarean fires,
To screech of owls and mandrake's fatal groan;
For thou could'st drain the marrow, mad the brains,
Or foulest passion breed in chastest veins.
Most poets are great wanderers by night,
And love the moon, though sons of Phœbus call'd;
And well we ken the small scarce-moving light
Of the she, wingless, amorous emerald,
That keeps her lone lamp burning for her mate,
Pining because he always is so late.
Unlike her kindred of the glowing zone,
That star the dark groves of the tropic even,
There the proud earth has comets of her own,
And every shoal out-fires the distant heaven,
And all the groves and underwoods unfold
A gorgeous blossoming of fire and gold.
Is it to soothe our sorrow, or deride,
That these bright insects leave both flower and tree,
And swarm upon the new-heaped earth beside
The pit designed for dead mortality?
Who has not heard of death-lights on a grave?
And these are death-lights, gay, and bright, and brave!
But who may count, with microscopic eye,
The multitudes of lives that gleam and flash
Behind the rousing keel, and multiply
In myriad millions, when the white oars dash
Through waves electric, or at stillest night
Spread round the bark becalm'd their milky white?
Oh, had the bards that did so sweetly sing
In times of old, when poesy was young,
Known but the half, in their quick blooming spring,
Of what we know, how sweetly had they sung!
Then many a plant, that yet has not a name,
Had won a story and a deathless fame;
And many a living thing of instinct wise,
Of form majestic, or of brightest plume,
That o'er the vast South Sea unwearied flies,
Or mid the broad magnolia's fiery bloom
Builds its low nest, had been beloved of men,
Like Robin Redbreast and plain Jenny Wren.
