THE CENTURY OF LIFE
THE GREAT INCURABLE
For all ill things there is a cure; the fire’s
Red spleen cool water shall at once appease, And noontide’s urgent rays the sunshade tires,
And there are spells for poison, and disease Finds in the leech’s careful drugs its ease. The raging elephant yet feels the goad,
And the dull ass and obstinate bullock rule Cudgel and stick and force upon their road.
For one sole plague no cure is found—the fool.
BODIES WITHOUT MIND
Some minds there are to Art and Beauty dead, Music and poetry on whose dull ear
Fall barren. Horns grace not their brutish head, Tails too they lack, yet is their beasthood clear,
That Heaven ordained not upon grass their feasts,
Good fortune is this for the other beasts.
THE HUMAN HERD
Whose days to neither charity nor thought Are given, nor holy deeds nor virtues prized, Nor learning, such to cumber earth were brought. How in the human world as men disguised This herd walk grazing, higher things unsought!
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