'
And lo! the Beasts no more were dumb,
But answered out of brakes and trees:
'Not ours,' they cried; 'Degenerate,
If ours at all,' they cried again,
'Ye fools, who war with God and Fate,
Who strive and toil: strange race of men.
'For WE are neither bond nor free,
For WE have neither slaves nor kings,
But near to Nature's heart are we,
And conscious of her secret things.
'Content are we to fall asleep,
And well content to wake no more,
We do not laugh, we do not weep,
Nor look behind us and before;
'But were there cause for moan or mirth,
'Tis WE, not you, should sigh or scorn,
Oh, latest children of the Earth,
Most childish children Earth has borne.'
* * *
They spoke, but that misshapen slave
Told never of the thing he heard,
And unto men their portraits gave,
In likenesses of beast and bird!
LES ROSES DE SADI
This morning I vowed I would bring thee my Roses,
They were thrust in the band that my bodice encloses,
But the breast-knots were broken, the Roses went free.
The breast-knots were broken; the Roses together
Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather,
And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea.
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