Lynchburg Virginian

POETRY.

BUTTERFLY AND SNAIL:

Or, elevation renders little minds proud and insolent.

All upstarts insolent to lace,
Remind us of the vulgar race.
As in the sunshine of the morn,
A Butterfly (but newly born)
Sat proudly perching on a rose,
With pert conceit his bosom glows:
His wings (all glorious to behold)
Bedeck'd with azure, jet, and gold.
While he displays; the spangled dew
Reflects his eyes, and various hue.
His now forgotten friend, a Snail,
Beneath his house with slimy trail,
Crawls o'er the grass; whom when he spies,
In wrath he to the gard'ner cries:
'What means yon peasant's daily toil.
From choking weeds to rid the soil?
Why wake you to the morning's care?
Why with new arts correct th' year?
Why grows the peach with crimson lie?
And why the plum's inviting blush?
Were they to feast his taste design'd,
That vermin of voracious kind?
Crush then the slow, the pilf'ring race;
So purge thy garden from disgrace.'
'What arrogance!' the Snail replied:
'How ignorant is upstart pride!
Hadst thou not thus with insult vain
Provok'd my patience to complain.
I had crawl'd by, mean birth, nor trac'd thee to the scum of earth.
For sixteen suns have wak'd the hours,
To swell the fruit and paint the flow'rs
Since I thy humble life survey'd
In base and sordid guise array'd.
A hideous nest, vile, unclean,
You dragg'd a slow and loathsome train;
And in your spider bowels drew
Foul slime, and spun the dirty clue.
In humble life ordained to end,
So I was born, and Snail shall end.
And what's a butterfly? A beast
A'ttack'd ere o.'