Porkopolis

The Pig

• Jacob! I do not love to see thy nose
• Turn'd up in scornful curve at yonder Pig.
• It would be well, my friend, if we, like him
• Were perfect in our kind! — And why despise
• The sow-born grunter? — He is obstinate,
• Thou answerest; ugly, and the filthiest beast
• That banquets upon offal. Now I pray you,
• Hear the Pig's Counsel.
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• Is he obstinate?
• We must not, Jacob, be deceived by words,
• By sophist sounds. A democratic beast
• He bows that his unmerciful drivers seek
• Their profit, and not his. He hath not learnt
• That Pigs were made for man, — born to be brawn'd
• And baconised: that he must please to give
• Just what his gracious masters please to take;
• Perhaps his tusks, the weapons Nature gave
• For self-defence, the general privilege:
• Perhaps, — hark Jacob! dost thou hear that horn?
• Woe to the young posterity of Pork!
• Their enemy is at hand.
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• Again thou sayest,
• The Pig is ugly. Jacob, look at him!
• Those eyes have taught the lover flattery.
• His face, — nay Jacob, Jacob! were it fair
• To judge a Lady in her dishabille?
• Fancy it drest, and with saltpetre rouged.
• Behold his tail, my friend; with curls like that
• The wanton hop marries her stately spouse:
• So crisp in beauty Amoretta's hair
• Rings round her lover's soul the chains of love.
• And what is beauty, but the aptitude
• Of parts harmonious? Give thy fancy scope,
• And thou wilt find that no imagined change
• Can beautify this beast. Place at his end
• The starry glories of the Peacock's pride;
• Give him the Swan's white breast; for his horn-hoofs
• Shape such a foot and ankle as the waves
• Crowded in eager rivalry to kiss,
• When Venus from the enamour'd sea arose;—
• Jacob, thou cans't but make a monster of him!
• All alteration man could think, would mar
• His Pig-perfection.
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• The last charge, — he lives
• A dirty life. Here I could shelter him
• With noble and right-reverend precedents,
• And show by sanction of authority
• That 'tis a very honourable thing
• To thrive by dirty ways. But let me rest
• On better ground the unanswerable defence.
• The Pig is a philosopher, who knows
• No prejudice. Dirt? Jacob, what is dirt?
• If matter, — why the delicate dish that tempts
• An o'ergorged epicure to the last morsel
• That stuffs him to the throat-gates, is no more.
• If matter be not, but as sages say,
• Spirit is all, and all things visible
• Are one, the infinitely modified.
• Think, Jacob, what that Pig is, and the mire
• Wherein he stands knee-deep!
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• And there! that breeze
• Pleads with me, and has won thee to the smile
• That speaks conviction. O'er you blossom'd field
• Of beans it came, and thoughts of bacon rise.
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• Westbury (1799)