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THE LITTLE WHITE ANIMALS
Reprinted from “The Conservator,” by courtesy of Mr. Horace Traubel.
We who have grown Human—house-bodied, cloth-skinned,
Wire-nerved and steam-heated—alas! we forget
The poor little beasts we have bandaged and pinned
And hid in our carpet-lined prisons!—and yet
Though our great social body be brickwork and steel,
The little white animals in it, can feel!
Humanity needs them. We cannot disclaim
The laws of the bodies we lived in before
We grew to be Human. In spite of our frame
Of time-scorning metals, the life at its core,
Controlling its action and guarding its ease,
Is the little white animal out of the trees!
It is true that our soul is far higher than theirs;
We look farther, live longer, love wider—we know;
They only can feel for themselves—and their heirs;
We, the life of humanity. Yet, even so,
We must always remember that soul at its base
Looks out through the little white animal's face.
If they die we are dead. If they live we can grow,
They ply in our streets as blood corpuscles ply
In their own little veins. If you cut off the flow
Of these beasts in a city, that city will die.
Yet we heighten our buildings and harden our souls
Till the little white animals perish in shoals.
Their innocent instincts we turn to a curse,
Their bodies we torture, their powers we abuse,
The beast that humanity lives in fares worse
Than the beasts of the forest with nothing to lose.
Free creatures, sub-human—they never have known
The sins and diseases we force on our own.
And yet 'tis a beautiful creature!—tall—fair—
With features full pleasant and hand-wooing hair;
Kind, docile, intelligent, eager to learn;
And the longing we read in its eyes when they burn
Is to beg us to use it more freely to show
To each other the love that our new soul can know.
Our engines drive fast in earth, water and air;
Our resistless, smooth-running machines still unroll,
With brain-work unceasing and handiwork fair,
New material forms for each step on the soul;
But that soul, for the contact without which it dies,
Comes closest of all through that animal's eyes.
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