Classic Poem

Sir, laugh no more at Pliny and the rest,
Who in their public writings do protest
That birds and beasts (by natural respects
And motions) judge of subsequent effects:
For I will prove that creatures, being dumb,
Have some foreknowledge of events to come.
" How prove you that?" I hear some Momus cry.
Thus (gentle sir) by good Philosophy.
First, brutish beasts, who are possessed of nought
But fantasy, to ordinate their thought,
And wanting reason's light (which men alone
Partake to help imagination),
It followeth that their fantasies do move
And imitate impressions from above;
And therefore often by the motion
Of birds and beasts some certain things are known.
Hereon the Stagirite (with judgment deep)
Discourseth in his book of watch and sleep:
That some imprudent are most provident —
He meaneth beasts, in reason indigent;
Where natheless their intellective parts
(Nothing affected with care-killing hearts,
But desert, as it were, and void of all)
Seem with their manners half-connatural.
For proof, the bitter stings of fleas and flies,
The slime-bred frogs, their harsh reports and cries,
Foresignify and prove a following rain.
" How prove you that?" cries Momus once again.
Why this, dull dunce. The moist and stormy time
Fitting the frogs that dwell in wet and slime,
Makes them by natural instinct to croak,
Because ensuing rains the spleen provoke.
And too, the fleas and flies in their degree,
By their attracted moist humidity,
Drawn from a certain virtue elative
Whence rain his generation doth derive,
Seek more than their accustomed nutriment.
So cocks in season inconvenient
That often crow, and asses that do rub
And chafe their hanging ears against a shrub,
A following rain do truly prophesy;
And this the reason in philosophy:
The cock, whose dryness by the heat was fed,
By moisture seeks the same extinguished;
The ass with vapours caused by the rain,
The humours then abounding in his brain,
Engendereth an itching in his head.
What need I more? He that hath Virgil read
(Were he as Cato crooked and precise),
Would grant that birds and beasts were weather-wise.
But if some misbelieving lad there be
That scorns herein to judge, and join with me,
This pain I do enjoin him for his sins:
When porpoise beat the sea with eager fins,
And beasts more greedily do chaw their cud,
And cormorants seek shore and fly the flood,
And birds do booze them in the pleasant springs,
And crows do ceaseless cry and beat their wings,
That cloakless in a champian he were set
Till to the skin he thoroughly be wet.