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, 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 veins 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, 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 the age, Berhymed La Puce in many a polish'd page. The Teian bard, so skittish and so hoary, That loved so well all things that merry be, The bloodless songster drunk with balmy dew, That sad old wag, that Peter Pindar hight, The insect empress, and her clustering throng Their stings bequeath'd to wicked Mandeville; Wealthy as Tyre their homes, the more their sorrow, Like Tyre despoil'd, and smother'd 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 No question you have heard of Virgil's gnat, If Homer did not, some one did, I 'm sure; The deep bass croak, and shriller treble squeak? And Aristophanes no title lacks To his BREKEKEKEX KOAX KOAX. But thou dark dweller of the central rock, Spawn'd ere avenging waves the hills o'erflow'd, Like antique virtue, hated upon earth, 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 Phoebus call'd ; And well we ken the small scarce-moving light Of the she, wingless, amorous emerald, Unlike her kindred of the glowing zone, That star the dark groves of the tropic even, Is it to soothe our sorrow, or deride, That these bright insects leave both flower and tree, And swarm upon the new-heap'd earth beside The pit design'd for dead mortality? Who has not heard of death-lights on a grave? 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? |