YE little snails, With slippery tails, Who noiselessly travel Along this gravel, By a silvery path of slime unsightly, I learn that you visit my pea-rows nightly. Felonious your visit, I guess! And I give you this warning, That, every morning, I'll strictly examine the pods; And if one I hit on, With slaver or spit on, Your next meal will be with the gods. I own you're a very ancient race, And Greece and Babylon were amid; You have tenanted many a royal dome, And dwelt in the oldest pyramid; The source of the Nile! -- O, you have been there! In the ark was your floodless bed; On the moonless night of Marathon You crawled o'er the mighty dead; But still, though I reverence your ancestries, I don't see why you should nibble my peas. The meadows are yours, -- the hedgerow and brook, You may bathe in their dews at morn; By the aged sea you may sound your shells, On the mountains erect your horn; The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers. Then why -- in the name of wonder -- Should my six pea-rows be the only cause To excite your midnight plunder? I have never disturbed your slender shells; You have hung round my aged walk; And each might have sat, till he died in his fat, Beneath his own cabbage-stalk: But now you must fly from the soil of your sires; Then put on your liveliest crawl, And think of your poor little snails at home, Now orphans or emigrants all. Utensils domestic and civil and social I give you an evening to pack up; But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight, To-morrow I'll hang each man Jack up. You'll think of my peas and your thievish tricks, With tears of slime, when crossing the Styx. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MISS KILMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG: HER BIRTH by THOMAS HOOD PALINGENESIS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW SONNET WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF 1914: 3 by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY THE GULF by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AT SENLIS ONCE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN OCTOBER by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES OCTOBER, 1866 by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT THE RONALDS OF THE BENNALS by ROBERT BURNS ON CLEADA'S HILL THE MOON IS BRIGHT by JEREMIAH JOSEPH CALLANAN |