Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MULE, by JAMES THOMAS COTTON NOE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MULE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I saw him standing in a barren field
Last Line: And yielded up the ghost?
Alternate Author Name(s): Noe, Cotton
Subject(s): Asses & Mules


I saw him standing in a barren field,
Head a-droop, as in a dream.
His shoulder blades and vertebrae
Had almost pierced the dried and rusty skin.
This Mule had plowed a hundred thousand rows,
And pulled a million pounds
In twenty years of unrequited drudgery
And aching toil.
No rhyme nor reason in his life.
And now the end.
His carcass soon would feel the beak
Of yonder vulture circling overhead.
He shuddered and a ripple,
Like wind-crinkles on a stagnant pool,
Ran through his almost hairless hide.
Perhaps a fly had bit
Into that raw place
Where the hame had rubbed;
Perhaps (Who knows?) he felt
Strange stirrings in his blood,
Vague atavistic memories of a day
Far back in his ancestral stream,
When Jesus on a lowly ass
Was hailed triumphantly as King.
Could he have been thus solaced
As he dropped upon his buckled knees
And yielded up the ghost?





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