Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Whenever by the way I see an ass
Standing sedate,
With pendent head and meditative eye,
Though all the world cry scorn, I cannot pass
The philosophic beast unheeded by,
But must, perforce,
Whatever errand wait,
Whatever purpose animate my feet,
A moment stay my course,
To lay my hand upon his hairy pate
And greeting mute
With him to exchange, such as to those seems meet
Whose hearts may not ignore the soul within the brute.

Under his ragged hide, his tattered fur,
Whereon the signs
Of sufferance are writ and toil and blows,
The heart divines the true philosopher,
Who through Life's shadow-pageant unmoved goes
And unto pain
And joy himself resigns,
As void alike of true significance,
To this is not o'erfain
Nor overmuch for that, in turn, repines,
Who is not bond
To chance nor thrall to shifting circumstance,
But through Life's moment feels th'eternity beyond.

Like Chapman's hero-duke, the lore of life
And death knows he;
And who can tell what measureless contempt
For this dull round of vain and shiftless strife
Of ours he harbours in his head unkempt,
What dreams of lands
Phantasmagoric flee
Athwart the darkling chambers of his brain,
As, patient, there he stands
And waits, with head bowed wellnigh to his knee,
His master's will,
What visions pass, what Paradisal plain
His free thought roams and feeds therein its frolic fill?

What matter, brother, if men lightly thee,
If of thy name,
For unperceptive pride inapt or loath
To appraise thy stoic magnanimity,
A byword for unwit and stubborn sloth
They've idly made!
Be theirs, not thine, the shame!
As well on Epictetus' self they might

A like reproach have laid,
As well with Zeno's mighty memory frame
Or Socrates'
A title of contempt, as thus to slight
Thee, that, man insomuch as beast may, likenest these!

Certes, full measure unto them their scorn
Dost thou repay.
Brother, who knoweth but in asses' speech
The name of man in like contempt be borne
And with thy long-eared brethren, each with each
Fabling, it pass
For token and assay
Of brutish dulness and unreasoning pride,
Even as the name of ass
Unjustly among men is current? Nay,
I doubt it not;
For, underneath thy rough and hairy hide,
A spirit dwells that had deserved a loftier lot.

O'er proud to murmur at thy case thou art.
Unlike mankind,
Who still with idle plaints the welkin shake,
Unable to preserve a constant heart,
And rail at heaven, if a finger ache,
Thou meetest ill
And weal with equal mind
And shakest but thine ears beneath the rain
Of blows, opposing still
Thy stoic sheer endurance to each wind
And blast of Fate,
Nor of thy magnanimity dost deign
Thy tyrant aught but scorn to render, and not hate.

God wot, thy life for cheer hath little scope;
A dreary round

Of dull monotonous toil, without a break,
And Heaven knows what at end thereof to hope,
Except it be to sleep and not to wake.
Uneath return
There may for thee be found
Unto the Syrian deserts of thy sires,
Whereas the vast suns burn
Upon the tamarisks and the jérboas bound
Across the sands;
Thy thought uneath beyond the Western fires
May look for life renewed in better, brighter lands.

Who knows what fancies fill thy daylong dream,
That nought can stir,
And cuirass thee 'gainst curses, kicks and blows?
What mirages of peace before thee gleam,
What scapes of spheres beyond our world of woes,
There's none can tell.
But this aver we may;
Some secret solace fortifies thy soul,
Some anaesthetic spell
Deadens thy sense to all that doth o'erstray
Thy world unknown,
So that, impervious to joy and dole,
Walled in thy waking dream, thou liv'st and di'st alone.

Wherefore o'er all the beasts I honour thee,
Brother; for thou
Art even as the sage, that, in Life's night
Doomed, like an exile banished oversea,
To live in sorrow, far from love and light,
Fares with head bent
And meditative brow,
Upon his inward vision, mid Life's hum
Of vanities, intent;
Nor doubt to see the scorn, that brands thee now,
To honour turned,

In the time coming, if indeed it come,
When men the True and Fair to reverence shall have learned.