Remonstrance with the Snails. ( Annonymous)

Ye little snails,
With slippery tails,
Who noiselessly travel
Along this gravel,
By a silvery path of slime unsightly,
I learn that you visit my pea rows nightly.
Felonious your visit, I guess!
And I give you this warning,
That, every morning,
I'll strictly examine the pods;
And if one I hit on,
With slaver or spit on,
Your next meal will be with gods.

I own you're a very ancient race,
And Greece and Babylon were amid;
You have tenanted many a royal dome,
And dwelt in the oldest pyramid;
The source of the Nile!-
O, you have been there!
In the ark was your floodless bed;
On the moonless night of marathon
You crawled o'er the mighty dead;
But still, though I reverence your ancestries,
I don't see why you should nibble my peas.

The meadows are yours,- the hedgerow and brook,
You may bathe in their dews at morn;
By the aged sea you may sound your shells,
On the mountains, erect your horn;
The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers,
Then why- in the name of wonder-
Should my pea-rows be the only cause
To excite your midnight plunder?

I have never disturbed your slender shells;
You have hung around my aged walk;
And each night have sat,
till he died in his fat,
Beneath his own cabbage-stalk:
But now you must fly from the soil of your sires:
Then put on your liveliest crawl,
And think of your poor little snails at home,
Now orphans or emigrants all.
Utensils domestic and civil and social
I give you an evening to pack up;
But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight,
To-morrow I'll hang each man Jack up.
You'll think of my peas and your theivish tricks,
With tears of slime, when crossing the Styx.
ANONYMOUS