Page:Pocahontas and Other Poems (NY).pdf/196

But yet we never praise the goose, who gave
This precious gift. Yet what can fill its place?
Think of the clumsy stylus, how absurd!
I know, indeed, that smart metallic pens
Have undertook to speculate at large,
But I eschew them all, and prophesy
Goose-quills will be immortal, as the art
To which they minister. 'Twere meet for me,
Though all beside were dumb, to fondly laud
The instrument that from my childhood up
Hath been my solace and my chosen friend
In hours of loneliness.
                                     I'd fain propose
That, mid the poultry in the farmer's yard,
The goose should wear a ducal coronet.
But our republic would not authorize
Aught like an order of nobility;
And so I institute a simple claim
For justice long withheld. I ask my peers,
The erudite and learned in the law,
Why the recusant owl is singled out
As Wisdom's bird? If blind Mythology,
Who on her fingers scarcely knew to count
Her thirty thousand gods, should groping make
Such error, 'tis not strange. But we, who skill
To ride the steam, and have a goodly hope
To ride the lightning too, need we be ruled
By vacillating Delphos? or stand still
To sanction her mistakes?
                                             The aforesaid owl,
With his dull, staring eyes, what hath he done
To benefit mankind? Moping all day