Beasts of Burden

Come, all you beasts of the field, eat greedily, all you beasts of the forest. Israel’s watchmen are blind, they are all oblivious; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they are dreamers lying around, loving to slumber.…You bring darkness, and it becomes night, when all the beasts of the forest prowl.

They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey, and to the beasts of the land. The birds will feed on them in summer, and all the wild animals in winter.

He summoned a bird of prey from the east, a man for His purpose from a far-off land. 

And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;

Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses,

So strong you thump, O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.