THE burros lazily infest the mountain regions of the West. You see them on the dizzy trails, with drooping ears and switching tails; and as they climb the rocky steep, they all seem walking in their sleep. The world has many mournful things, that walk on legs or fly on wings; the moping owl seems so depressed it gives you fantods in your breast; the cross-eyed jackal sits and howls more dismally than all the owls. The circus clown has won renown as being utterly cast down. But if you'd see the soul of woe, pack up your thermos flasks and go, out to some rugged western place, and look a burro in the face. There you will find, beneath those ears, the sorrow of a million years. I wondered why he looked so sad, when, in a Colorado grad, I first beheld him packing round a dame who weighed two hundred pound. But soon I knew; where'er he wends, a gale of merriment ascends, and dreary jokes assail his ears and fill his patient eyes with tears. No beast can be a standing jest, and find in life much joy or zest, | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WISDOM COMETH WITH THE YEARS by COUNTEE CULLEN THE LITTLE PEOPLES by CLAUDE MCKAY OLD BLACK MEN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON MORAL ESSAYS: EPISTLE 4. TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL BURLINGTON by ALEXANDER POPE AT THE CEDARS by DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS |