246 The Poets Beasts. 



and persistent. Their lambs are innocent and white and 

 gentle ; so the wolves that eat them are atrociously guilty 

 and unspeakably swarthy and grim. Bi^t this is after all 

 only the survival of the world's original pastoral myth. 



Judged from any but a poet's standpoint, sheep might 

 almost be accounted the happiest and most fortunate of 

 animals. Death, after all, is the universal lot ; the grim 

 policeman calls with his summons upon each in turn. Not 

 that sheep ever seem to contemplate anything farther ahead 

 than their own noses. They are not troubled with visions 

 of cold mutton — 



" The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 

 Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? 

 Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food 

 And licks the liand just raised to shed his blood." ^ — Pope. 



But, with the poets, their mildly-idiotic vacuity of face, their 

 senseless imitation of each other's actions, their shambling 

 evasion of anything like vigorous independence for attack 

 or self-defence, are interpreted into innocence, docility, and 

 meekness. Their timidity is called gentleness. Thus 

 invested with many good qualities — those which specially 

 engage the poetic fancy — we find them constantly besung 



^ What an admirable passage is Tennyson's- — 



" And in the flocks 

 The iamb rejoiceth in tlie year, 

 And raceth freely with his fere, 

 And answers to his mother's calls 

 F'rom the flowered furrow. In a time 

 Of which he wots not, run short pains 

 Tiiro' his warm lieart, and tiien, from whence 

 He knows not, on his lijjlit there falls 

 A shad(}w ; and his native slope, 

 Wliere he was wont to leap and climb, 

 Floats from liis sick and filmed eyes. 

 And something in the darkness draws 

 His forehead earthward, and he dies." ^ 



