Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

The patience of the brutes, it breaks my heart!
To see
The mule bowed down beneath the crushing load,
The sheep, the swine, the kine, through street and mart
To slaughter driven with dog and scourge and goad,
To mark it maddens me,
The horse's eye beneath the lash's smart,
The ass's martyr magnanimity.

The brutes, that know no joy,
That drudge from dawn to night,
Year in, year out,
Bearing the burden, in their dull employ,
From morn till evening bring the dark about,
Their labour ended scarce with ended light,
That know of no surcease,
No time of pleasant peace,
No hour of dreaming in the summer day,
No pause of play,
No frolic wandering in the fields of May,
Nor even, to recompense
Of all their sweat's expense,
May look, — save here and there,

And only on our sacred Saxon soil,
Our dear-belovéd land,
Our isle of manlihead and gentleness,
— For aught but careless harshness at his hand
Who tradeth on their toil,
Nor (save in England's earth, which Heaven bless!)
Assurance due may have of drink and meat,
To stay them in their stress,
Of the sheer couch of straw and shelter feat,
Of common ruth and justice in duresse!

Marry how oft have I,
In Spanish, German, French, Italian ways,
(In England seldom yet, to God the praise!)
Driven to despair well nigh,
Possessed with pity inexpressible,
That forced me put my English muteness by,
To see the cattle's hell,
The mule's, the ass's, horse's scars unhealed,
The hopeless misery, the anguish mute,
The untended wounds ableed
Of the starved, tortured beasts, essayed to plead
With their churl tyrants, hearts to pity sealed,
And had to answer, “Pooh! 'Tis but a brute!”

Man, so the adage runs,
The beasts' God is; say, rather, demon dire,
Such as that Moloch, who his servants' sons
And daughters erst devoured, their little ones,
Unpitying, clasping in his clutch of fire,
Or as the God of Sina's rugged hill,
With fire and thunder shod,
In blood and ravin wallowing His fill,
His friends scarce knowing from His enemies;
— Man such a demon-God to the beasts is.
And yet this barbarous God,
— As cruel as the God himself hath wrought

In his own likeness and in heaven on high
Set for his service, trembling at His nod
Whom he of his own thought
Hath fashioned for a fetish, in the sky
To stand between himself and formless Fate,
— This God, by whom the beasts are bought and sold'
This God, — ay, there's tbe rub! — they love, not hate.

Such love who ever knew,
So pure, so frank, so true,
Such simple, uncorrupted faith from man
Who ever had, as that which any may,
During their narrow span
Of life, alack! their all too little day,
For just a word or two
Of careless kindness, for some scant and few
Caresses, for sheer food and shelter due,
From cat or dog or horse himself procure?
Who of us all, that hath but eyes to see
And ears to hark,
But every day must mark
How simpler, purer are the beasts than we,
Who, with our keener ken,
Knowing the light, yet follow on the dark,
How faithfuller they are, how passion-free,
How wiser, truer, better far than men?

Nay, what boots preaching? Who are they that hear?
Who, in our darkling day
Of strife and stress and wild hysteric play,
Who is there to the message will give ear
Of him who crieth in the deserts grey?
Our current creeds are mute
Of duty to the brute:
To our exemplar, Christ, the beast was nought;
Man only had, in sum,
The franchise of the kingdom of His thought.

It booteth nothing till the new Gods come,
(Whose kingdom nigh at hand all signs foresay,
As dying Night foretells the nearing Day,)
Who, peradventure, by the lore of Ind,
Shall teach the heedless world that humankind
With its dumb brethren shares the Undifferenced Soul
And that one breath divine
For man and beast is and one common goal.

Till then, the beasts' repine
To endure and this their dole
To see and hopeless of amendment know,
Still, patient as themselves, ourselves resign
Must we. But, yet, the pity of it, oh,
The pity, pity of it, brothers mine!