FABLE [09] IX.

The Bull and the Mastiff.

Seek you to train your fav'rite boy? 
Each caution, ev'ry care employ,
 And ere you venture to confide,
 Let his preceptor's heart be try'd;
 Weigh well his manners, life, and scope,
 On these depends thy future hope. 

As on a time, in peaceful reign,
 A Bull enjoy'd the flow'ry plain,
 A Mastiff pass'd; inflam'd with ire,
 His eye-balls shot indignant fire,
 He foam'd, he rag'd with thirst of blood. 

Spurning the ground the monarch stood,
 And roar'd aloud. Suspend the fight,
 In a whole skin, go, sleep to-night;
 Or tell me, ere the battel rage,
 What wrongs provoke thee to engage? 
Is it ambition fires thy breast,
 Or avarice that ne'er can rest? 
From these alone unjustly springs
 The world-destroying wrath of Kings. 

The surly Mastiff thus returns. 
Within my bosom glory burns. 
Like heroes of eternal name,
 Whom poets sing, I fight for fame:
 The butcher's spirit-stirring mind
 To daily war my youth inclin'd,
 He train'd me to heroic deed,
 Taught me to conquer or to bleed. 

Curst dog, the Bull reply'd, no more
 I wonder at thy thirst of gore,
 For thou (beneath a butcher train'd,
 Whose hands with cruelty are stain'd,
 His daily murders in thy view,)
 Must, like thy tutor, blood pursue. 
Take then thy fate. With goring wound
 At once he lifts him from the ground,
 Aloft the sprawling hero flys,
 Mangled he falls, he howls and dyes.