 | The complete poetical works of Thomas Hood |  |
89
THE MONKEY-MARTYR A FABLE
‘God help thee, said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will: so I turned about the cage to get to the door.’
—Sterne.1
'Tis strange, what awkward figures and odd capersFolks cut, who seek their doctrine from the papers;
But there are many shallow politicians,
Who take their bias from bewilder'd journals—
Turn state-physicians,
And make themselves fools'-caps of the diurnals.
2
One of this kind, not human, but a monkey,Had read himself at last to this sour creed—
That he was nothing but Oppression's flunkey,
And man a tyrant over all his breed.
He could not read
Of niggers whipt, or over-trampled weavers,
But he applied their wrongs to his own seed,
And nourish'd thoughts that threw him into fevers.
His very dreams were full of martial beavers,
And drilling Pugs, for liberty pugnacious,
To sever chains vexations.
In fact, he thought that all his injured line
Should take up pikes in hand, and never drop 'em
Till they had clear'd a road to Freedom's shrine,
Unless perchance the turnpike men should stop 'em.
3
Full of this rancour,Pacing one day beside St. Clement Danes,
It came into his brains
To give a look in at the Crown and Anchor;
Where certain solemn sages of the nation
Were at that moment in deliberation
How to relieve the wide world of its chains,
Pluck despots down,
And thereby crown
Whitee-as well as blackee-man-cipation.
Pug heard the speeches with great approbation,
90
To see mere coalheavers
Such perfect Bolivars—
Waiters of inns sublimed to innovators,
And slaters dignified as legislators—
Small publicans demanding (such their high sense
Of liberty) an universal licence—
And patten-makers easing Freedom's clogs—
The whole thing seem'd
So fine, he deem'd
The smallest demagogues as great as Gogs!
4
Pug, with some curious notions in his noddle,Walk'd out at last, and turn'd into the Strand,
To the left hand,
Conning some portions of the previous twaddle,
And striding with a step that seem'd design'd
To represent the mighty March of Mind,
Instead of that slow waddle
Of thought, to which our ancestors inclined.
No wonder, then, that he should quickly find
He stood in front of that intrusive pile,
Where Cross keeps many a kind
Of bird confin'd,
And free-born animal, in durance vile—
A thought that stirred up all the monkey-bile.
5
The window stood ajar—It was not far,
Nor, like Parnassus, very hard to climb—
The hour was verging on the supper-time,
And many a growl was sent through many a bar.
Meanwhile Pug scrambled upward like a tar,
And soon crept in,
Unnotic'd in the din
Of tuneless throats, that made the attics ring
With all the harshest notes that they could bring;
For like the Jews,
Wild beasts refuse
In midst of their captivity—to sing.
6
Lord! how it made him chafe,Full of his new emancipating zeal,
To look around upon this brute-bastille,
And see the king of creatures in—a safe!
91
Swallowing slavery's most bitter pills—
A bear in bars unbearable. And then
The fretful porcupine, with all its quills
Imprison'd in a pen!
A tiger limited to four feet ten;
And, still worse lot,
A leopard to one spot!
An elephant enlarged,
But not discharged,
(It was before the elephant was shot;)
A doleful wanderow, that wandered not;
An ounce much disproportion'd to his pound.
Pug's wrath wax'd hot
To gaze upon these captive creatures round;
Whose claws—all scratching—gave him full assurance
They found their durance vile of vile endurance.
7
He went above—a solitary mounterUp gloomy stairs—and saw a pensive group
Of hapless fowls—
Cranes, vultures, owls,
In fact, it was a sort of Poultry-Compter,
Where feather'd prisoners were doom'd to droop:
Here sat an eagle, forced to make a stoop,
Not from the skies, but his impending roof;
And there aloof,
A pining ostrich, moping in a coop;
With other samples of the bird creation,
All caged against their powers and their wills,
And cramp'd in such a space, the longest bills
Were plainly bills of least accommodation.
In truth, it was a very ugly scene
To fall to any liberator's share,
To see those winged fowls, that once had been
Free as the wind, no freer than fix'd air.
8
His temper little mended,Pug from this Bird-cage Walk at last descended
Unto the lion and the elephant,
His bosom in a pant
To see all nature's Free List thus suspended,
And beasts deprived of what she had intended.
They could not even prey
In their own way;
92
Thus he revolved—
And soon resolved
To give them freedom, civil and religious.
9
That night there were no country cousins, rawFrom Wales, to view the lion and his kin:
The keeper's eyes were fix'd upon a saw;
The saw was fix'd upon a bullock's shin:
Meanwhile with stealthy paw,
Pug hasten'd to withdraw
The bolt that kept the king of brutes within.
Now, monarch of the forest! thou shalt win
Precious enfranchisement—thy bolts are undone;
Thou art no longer a degraded creature,
But loose to roam with liberty and nature;
And free of all the jungles about London—
All Hampstead's heathy desert lies before thee
Methinks I see thee bound from Cross's ark,
Full of the native instinct that comes o'er thee,
And turn a ranger
Of Hounslow Forest and the Regent's Park—
Thin Rhodes's cows—the mail-coach steeds endanger,
And gobble parish watchmen after dark:—
Methinks I see thee, with the early lark,
Stealing to Merlin's cave—(thy cave).—Alas,
That such bright visions should not come to pass!
Alas, for freedom, and for freedom's hero!
Alas, for liberty of life and limb!
For Pug had only half unbolted Nero,
When Nero bolted him!
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