TO thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band, | |
| Condemn’d to labour in a barb’rous land, | |
| Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays, | |
| And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise. | |
| O happy Yahoo, purged from human crimes, | 5 |
| By thy sweet sojourn in those virtuous climes, | |
| Where reign our sires; there, to thy country’s shame, | |
| Reason, you found, and Virtue were the same. | |
| Their precepts razed the prejudice of youth, | |
| And ev’n a Yahoo learn’d the love of Truth. | 10 |
| Art thou the first who did the coast explore? | |
| Did never Yahoo tread that ground before? | |
| Yes, thousands! But in pity to their kind, | |
| Or sway’d by envy, or thro’ pride of mind, | |
| They hid their knowledge of a nobler race, | 15 |
| Which own’d, would all their sires and sons disgrace. | |
| You, like the Samian, visit lands unknown, | |
| And by their wiser morals mend your own. | |
| Thus Orpheus travell’d to reform his kind, | |
| Came back, and tamed the brutes he left behind. | 20 |
| You went, you saw, you heard: with virtue fought, | |
| Then spread those morals which the Houyhnhnms taught. | |
| Our labours here must touch thy gen’rous heart, | |
| To see us strain before the coach and cart; | |
| Compell’d to run each knavish jockey’s heat! | 25 |
| Subservient to Newmarket’s annual cheat! | |
| With what reluctance do we lawyers bear, | |
| To fleece their country clients twice a year! | |
| Or managed in your schools, for fops to ride, | |
| How foam, how fret beneath a load of pride! | 30 |
| Yes, we are slaves—but yet, by reason’s force, | |
| Have learn’d to bear misfortune like a horse. | |
| O would the stars, to ease my bonds ordain | |
| That gentle Gulliver might guide my rein! | |
| Safe would I bear him to his journey’s end, | 35 |
| For ’t is a pleasure to support a friend. | |
| But if my life by doom’d to serve the bad, | |
| Oh! mayst thou never want an easy pad! HOUYHNHNM | |
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