THE staunch and strenuous Serpent spends his time

In the safe field of serpentine pursuits,

Rightly considering it a social crime

To parody the ways of other brutes.

Scorning the fraud of alien aspirations,

The snobbishness that apes another class,

Proud, and yet conscious of his limitations,

He bites the dust and grovels in the grass.

The moral food that keeps him down is Force,

Force to confine his fancies to their beds.

Original

Makes him the laughing-stock of quadrupeds.

No weak attempt to carol like the Lark,

Fore-doomed to failure and to ridicule,

Troubles his life; he does not wish to bark,

Has no desire to amble like a Mule.

Having no legs he does not try to walk,

But keeps contentedly his native crawl;

Having no voice he does not strive to talk,

Much less to bellow or to caterwaul.

Mark the inevitably reached result:

To balance the advantages he missed,

In three departments he may yet exult

To be the only perfect specialist.

Three arts are his: to writhe, to hiss, to creep.

The Toad's tenacity, the Wombat's wiles,

Or the keen cunning of the crafty Sheep

(And all are artists in their various styles),

Would vainly challenge them. He reigns supreme

In these the fields of his activity,

And reigning so defies the envious Bream,

Who sneers and shrugs and sniggers in the sea.

Type of the wise, who roar but never foam

(If they can help it) at the mouth, except

When night and morn they brush their teeth at home

With pallid powder for that purpose kept.