Remonstrance with the Snails

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 agèd 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 agèd 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.