Page:The poetical works of James Thomson (1895), Volume 2.djvu/16

 6 Of all these creatures whom I breed and feed,

One only with his works is strange to me,

Is strange and admirable and pitiable,

As homeless where all others are at home.

My crocodiles are happy in my slime,

And bask and seize their prey, each for itself,

And leave their eggs to hatch in the hot sun,

And die, their lives fulfilled, and are no more,

And others bask and prey and leave their eggs.

My doves they build their nests, each pair its own,

And feed their callow young, each pair its own,

None serves another, each one serves itself;

All glean alike about my fields of grain,

And all the nests they build them are alike,

And are the self-same nests they built of old

Before the rearing of the pyramids,

Before great Hekatompylos was reared;

Their cooing is the cooing soft and sweet

That murmured plaintively at evening-tide

In pillared Karnak as its pillars rose;

And they are happy floating through my palms.

But Man, the admirable, the pitiable,

These sad-eyed peoples of the sons of men,

Are as the children of an alien race

Planted among my children, not at home,

Changelings aloof from all my family.

The one is servant and the other lord,