Classic Poem

BODY

Well, here we go!
I told you that the weather looked like snow.
Why couldn't we have stayed there at the inn?
There was good straw and barley in the bin
And a grey jenny with a melting eye,
Neat-hoofed and sly — I rather like them sly —
Master a trader and a man of sense.
He likes his life and dinner. So do I.
Sleeps warm and doesn't try to cross a pass
A mountain-goat would balk at in his prime,
Where the hail falls as big as Peter's Pence
And every stone you slip on rolls a mile!
But that's not you, of course — that's not our style —
We're far too dandipratted and sublime!
Which of us is the ass?

Good ground, beyond the snow?
I've heard that little song before, you know.
Past cliff and ragged mount
And the wind's skinning-knife,
Far and forever far,
The water of the fount,
The water that is life
And the bright star?
Give me my water from a decent trough,
Not dabs of ice licked out of freezing stone
And, as for stars, why, let the stars alone,
You'll have us both in glory soon enough!

Alas, alack!
I'm carrying an idiot on my back.
I'm carrying Mr. Who to God Knows Where.
Oh, do not fix me with that burning stare
Of beauteous disdain!
I'm not a colt. I know my ass's rights.
A stall and fodder and sound sleep of nights.

One can't expect to live on sugarcane
But what's the sense, when one grows old and stiff,
Of scrambling up this devil-haunted cliff
To play hot cockles with the Northern Lights?
I'll balk, that's what I'll do!
And all the worse for you!
Oh, lash me if you like — I know your way —
Rake my poor sides and leave the bloody weal
Beneath your spurring steel.
My lungs are fire and my limbs are lead.

Go on ahead? I can't go on ahead.
Desert you in your need? Nay, master, nay.

Nay, master, nay; I grumble as I must
And yet, as you perceive, I do go on,
Grudging, impenitent and full of fear
And knowing my own death.
You have no fear because you have no breath.
Your silver essence knows nor cold nor heat.
Your world's beyond. My only world is here.
(Oh, the sweet rollings in the summer dust,
The smell of hay and thistles and the street,
The quick life, done so soon!)
You'll have your guerdon when the journey's done.
You'll play the hero where the wine is poured,
You and the moon — but I
Who served you well and shall become a bone,
Why do I live when it must be to die?
Why should I serve — and still have no reward?

SOUL

Your plaint is sound, yet I must rule you still
With bridle, bit and will.
For, without me, you are the child unborn
And the infertile corn.
I am not cruelty but I am he,
Drowning in sea, who yet disdains the sea,
And you that sea, that shore
And the brave, laboring oar,
Little upon the main,
That drives on reefs I know not of but does not drive in vain.
For I'm your master but your scholar, too,
And learn great things of you.
And, though I shall forsake you, nothing loth,
To grumble with the clods,
To sleep into the stone,
I'll answer for us both
When I stand up alone.
For it is part as your ambassador
I go before
To tell the gods who sit above the show,
How, in this world they never stoop to know,
Under what skies, against what mortal odds,
The dust grows noble with desire and pain,
And that not once but every day anew.