Poem by William Crowe

Inscribed beneath the Picture of an Ass

  Meek animal, whose simple mien
  Provokes th’ insulting eye of Spleen
  To mock the melancholy trait
  Of patience in thy front display’d,
  By thy Great Author fitly so pourtray’d,
  To character the sorrows of thy fate;
  Say, Heir of misery, what to thee
  Is life?—A long, long, gloomy stage
  Through the sad vale of labour and of pain!
  No pleasure hath thine youth, no rest thine age,
  Nor in the vasty round of this terrene
  Hast thou a friend to set thee free,
  Till Death, perhaps too late,
  In the dark evening of thy cheerless day,
  Shall take thee, fainting on thy way,
  From the rude storm of unresisted hate.

    Yet dares the erroneous crowd to mark
  With folly thy despised race,
  Th’ ungovernable pack, who bark
  With impious howlings in Heaven’s awful face,
  If e’er on their impatient head
  Affliction’s bitter show’r is shed.

    But ’tis the weakness of thy kind
  Meekly to bear the inevitable sway;
  The wisdom of the human mind
  Is to murmur and obey.

1. Lewesdon Hill
2. Ode to the Lyric Muse
3. Merlin's Glass
4. Verses Intended to Have Been Spoken in the Theatre to the Duke of Portland, at His Installation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, in the Year 1793

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