For beneath all his load I could see but his legs,
And they were as thin as the thinnest clothes-pegs.

I said, "O most gentle and innocent beast,
Say,--why is your burden so greatly increased?
Who loads you like this, beyond reason and right?
Is it done for a purpose, or just out of spite?
Is it all your own treasures you have in your pack,
That crumples your backbone and makes your ribs crack?
It is really too much for an old ass's back."

"Treasures!"--he groaned, through a lump of chewed grass,
"_Are_ they treasures? I don't know. I'm only the ass
That carries whatever they all like to pack
On my load, without thought of my ribs or my back.
I know there are heaps of things there that I hate,
But it's always been so. I guess it's my fate."
And he flicked his long ears, and switched his thin tail,
And rasped his rough neck with a hinder-foot nail.

"There are fighting-men somewhere up there, and some fools,
And talking-men--heaps--who have quitted their stools
To manage the state and direct its affairs,
And see, I suppose, that we all get our shares,--
And ladies and lords, and their offspring and heirs,
And their flunkeys and toadies, and merchants and wares.--
And parsons and lawyers,--O heaps,--in that box,
And big folk and small folk, and all kinds of crocks.

"_That mighty big bale_?--Poison, that,--for the people;
Whatever else lacks they must still have their tipple.
That's The Trade, don't you know, that no one can shackle,--
'Vested Int'rests,' they call it, and that kind of cackle.
Why the Bishops themselves dare not tackle the tipple,
For it props up the church and at times builds a steeple."

(A strangely ingenuous old ass, you perceive,
Whom any shrewd rascal could easily deceive.)

"_That other big bale_?--What I said,--fighting things,--
Ammunition and guns and these new things with wings,
O yes, they bulk big, but we need them,--for why?--
If we hadn't as much as the others have--why,
They say we might just as well lie down and die.

"_Yon big bale on top_?--Ah! that is a big weight.
And that's just the one of the lot I most hate.
That's Capital, that is,--and landlords and such;
And there seems to me sometimes a bit over-much
In that bale. But there,--I'm perhaps wrong again,
Such matters are outside an old ass's ken.

"_My fodder_? Oh well, you see,--no room for that.
I pick as I go, and n