Porkopolis

The Lament of Toby, The Learned Pig

• Oh, heavy day! oh, day of woe!
• To misery a poster,
• Why was I ever farrowed, why
• Not spitted for a roaster?
•  
• In this world, pigs, as well as men,
• Must dance to fortune's fiddlings,
• But must I give the classics up,
• For barley-meal and middlings?
•  
• Of what avail that I could spell
• And read, just like my betters,
• If I must come to this at last,
• To litters, not to letters?
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• Oh, why are pigs made scholars of?
• It baffles my discerning,
• What griskins, fry, and chitterlings
• Can have to do with learning.
•  
• Alas! my learning once drew cash,
• But public fame's unstable,
• So I must turn a pig again
• And fatten for the table.
•  
• To leave my literary line
• My eyes get red and leaky;
• But Giblett doesn't want me blue,
• But red and white, and streaky.
•  
• Old Mullins used to cultivate
• My learning like a gard'ner;
• But Giblett only thinks of lard,
• And not of Doctor Lardner.
•  
• He does not care about my brain
• The value of two coppers,
• All that he thinks about my head
• Is, how I'm off for choppers.
•  
• Of all my literary kin
• A farewell must be taken,
• Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!
• The philosophic Bacon!
•  
• Day after day my lessons fade,
• My intellect gets muddy;
• A trough I have, and not a desk,
• A stye — and not a study!
•  
• Another little month, and then
• My progress ends, like Bunyan's;
• The seven sages that I loved
• Will be chopped up with onions!
•  
• Then over head and ears in brine
• They'll souse me, like a salmon,
• My mathematics turned to brawn,
• My logic into gammon.
•  
• My Hebrew will all retrograde,
• Now I'm put up to fatten,
• My Greek, it will all go to grease,
• The dogs will have my Latin!
•  
• Farewell to Oxford ! — and to Bliss!
• To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop, —
• I now must be content with chats,
• Instead of learned gossip!
•  
• Farewell to 'Town!' farewell to 'Gown!'
• I've quite outgrown the latter, —
• Instead of Trencher-cap my head
• Will soon be in a platter!
•  
• Oh, why did I at Brazen-Nose
• Rout up the roots of knowledge?
• A butcher that can't read will kill
• A pig that's been to college!
•  
• For sorrow I could stick myself,
• But conscience is a dasher;
• A thing that would be rash in man
• In me would be a rasher!
•  
• One thing I ask — when I am dead
• And past the Stygian ditches —
• And that is, let my schoolmaster
• Have one of my two Hitches.
•  
• 'twas he who taught my letters so
• I ne'er mistook or missed 'em,
• Simply by ringing at the nose
• According to Bell's system.