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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Metempsychosis

Metempsychosis.

(From Garlic and Green Gooseberries, being vol. xx of the Poems of R. E. R. D. W. M. B., m.a., ll.d., b.sc, N.Z. Tabued in the Polynesian Isles; copyrighted in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America and the Four Quarters of the Moon; Entered at Stationers' Hall; Inscribed in the Index Expurgatorius. All Rights Reserved.)

I
I do remember that I was an Ass
Long æons past, in period pliocene,
And frolickt sportive on a meadow green
That fringed the rim of a far-spread morass
So deep that neither man nor beast could pass.
Blue was the sapphire sky, the air serene—
Yet wild and strange my inward thoughts had been
With doubts and questions still unsolved—alas!
For I my Fourfold Nature had discerned,
Felt the Divine that hidden in me lay;
All things of earth my soaring spirit spurned:
My tail I reared: my voice, in long-drawn bray
Resounded to the astonished hills. I yearned
For higher nobler fare than grass or hay.

II
'Tis past. I doubt e'en now if in the scale
Of being I since then have sunk or risen.
Still from this foul and gloomy earthly prison
I gaze Beyond, and strive to rend the Veil
That hides the Hidden. Still, with lips grown pale,
With furrowed brow and care-worn visage wizen,
I question Heaven and Hell—in vain! Oh, 'tis an
Exasperating exercise, to ask and fail
To find an answer. Yet I question still.
O Astral Bodies, tell me! ؟Is it worse
In quadrupedal form to rove o'er vale and hill
With melancholy mad; or rave and curse
One's ignorance and folly, and fulfil
This destiny—to bray in uncouth verse?

III
I am—deny it if you will—a Poet.
To scribble trash, or worse,* is sure no sin:
I cannot cease, if I but once begin.
I am a Bard- (albeit you may not know it—
Although my verses wholly fail to show it)—
And to my four-legged Comrade near akin.
Dear Fellow-mortal! ؟Shall I now begin
My obligation to thee to forget? Oh no! it
Is not for Me, thus ingrate, so to spurn
Mine ancestry! This morn, with sudden pain,
I lookt upon a Picture. Words that Burn
Were writ beneath two Donkeys, on a plain
Contented grazing. Inly did I yearn
The legend reading: « ؟When shall We Three meet again? » §

* Burn: Introductory Epistle.

Burns: To a Mouse.

Gray: The Progress of Poesy.

§ Shakspeare: Macbeth.