[BNP/E3, 49A2 – 9-10]

 

This simple tale a warning brings[1]

To men in power, or priest or kings

What it means they cannot tell,

‘Tis that I have not said it well.

 

 

RATS.

An owner of real estate

Lived in his house calmly elate

The life that people generally

Live {…}

Some one one day to him suggested

In quite a usual conversation

That with rats on rats was infested

 

He saw a rat within his room

Oh, oh, said he in joyous gloom,

Oh, oh, so here we are, I see.

 

He laid them baites, left food about

And when from their holes they came out

He caught them neatly and there was not

Torture imaginable to wreak

That on the rats was not then wrought.

He felt a joy too deep to speak

(The man) to find his traps do the work

With a mechanism without shirk

In none of its {…} weak;

He rested and slept at ease,

Then waking, woke to what of rare,

The killing of the mice, did please

Him more than[2] conceivable were.

 

One day he woke to find a mouse

Caught in the trap,

But traces of another one

That on the floor had for long run.

He swore revenged and another trap

He got, but whether

 

The facts is the more traps he got

 

[9v]

 

The more he saw there were a lot

Of mice too much for traps that could

Be bought by money in cold blood.

 

So he said to have all my pleasure

I must wake up and teach this vermin

That in my wit and arm a treasure 

I have to make them jump & squirm in.

 

He laid his baits same as before,

But instead of a trap he got

A whip and water boiling-hot,

He hardly needed any more

To make the vermin micely roar.

He lay in wait night after night

And such brutality he did fight

The rats’ appearance, so he burnt

Them and hit and {…}

And crushed them slowly with his heels,

(I’m sure your spirit pity feels)

That their appearance grew less, less

And less still, till he had to augment

To pay their absence, the distress

He caused the stray ones that he caught.

 

They soon no more appeared not.

 

Ah but they’re somewhere (the man cried)

Somewhere they’ll be well descried;

He drove an opening in the floor

And found a way to go beneath

The house, and of course he found more…

Death he gave them, death upon death

Till he himself was out of breath

With scheming and executing plans

To show his instinct was a man’s.

 

He soon invaded their domain

And where before they had been at peace

He made them to feel sore and pain.

At last or the rats it was a crime

To {…} almost to; live,

{…} 

 

[10r]

 

The pleasure of the man {…} increased

 

So on, so on, he drove and killed

As far, as much as he well willed,

He drove the rats out of this and that

Place till they disappeared and what

Distressed him half yet pleased him, he

Was of the vermin {…} free.

 

“They are but vermin” he declared

“They said (the people) that they fared

Quite well here where I built my house

That this was their place and that I

 

Now I am quiet, because that’s 

A thing quite clear, superior I’m 

A man is more of life than rats

They have no right to live; each time

I caught them I taught it well enough

Now there are none, or they are gone.

I’m proud of my power, it were stuff

To think this game I have not won.

 

One night quite pleased he with himself

He went to sleep, but in the night

Woke with a strange vague, {…} fright

Why? He listened and hear afr {…}

A rumble, as of a war

Of distant elements, On it came

Like in rotting wood aflame

And he distinguished, shook with terror,

Unnumerable noises made

The combined noise whose horror

His man’s condition betrayed

And showed him the animal he was

Not a whit did the strange noise pass

But nearer, n., n., came

And he perceived then up from where,

Access was small, and, it semmed,

From wall, from floor, from celling, there

Shot multituted of rats, or rats, of rats

The floor’s warmed with them, horrible

 

One rat is a small, weak thing

But thousands of rats come against

 

[10v]

 

A man make him {…}

 

The man trembled and quailed and on

Him jumped the rats in numbers gone

Past the thousand[3] that could count

Any one, enormous amount. 

A man can fight with rats ever, that’s 

Clear, but not with thousands of rats.

 

The rushed on him and ate and gnawed

And still the number seamed to grow

And underneath the nauseous touch

Of all the animal’s fierce clutch

And teeth and bodies the man felt

Gnawed to death, he prayed, he knelt,

He promised cheese and many things more

But all was unavailable

Upon him with dread greed they fell

And like a {…} did devour.

 

Not even his skeleton remained

Such was the fury that they ate

Every bone that had pertained

Unto the man that tyrant was.

Such as his execrable fate 

So did the thought deadly pass. 

 

20-2-08.

 

Where now they are no harm they do

Have they not the same wright as you

To live? But he replied, Ah, ah,

I do not like them, they are far

 

And as they are not men I may

Kill them and trap them sans dismay

 

 
[1] Of

This simple tale a warning brings
[2] more than /scarce his\
[3] /1000\ thousand