No tireless, quenchless mendicant Is so persistent as the Ant; Wasps, Beetles, Hornets, Drones and Flies, Sharpers of every sort and size, Loafers, intent on ousting thee, All are less obstinate than she. To pinch thy toe, thy nose to tweak, To tickle face and loins, to sneak Beneath thy belly, who so bold? Give her the tiniest foothold, The slut will march from side to side Across thy wings in shameless pride. II Now here’s a story that is told, Incredible, by men of old: Once starving on a winter’s day By secret, miserable way Thou soughtest out the Ant and found Her spacious warehouse underground. That rich possessor in the sun Was busy drying, one by one, Her treasures, moist with the night’s dew, Before she buried them from view In corn-sacks of sufficient size; Then didst thou sue with tearful eyes, Saying, “Alas! This deadly breeze Pursues me everywhere; I freeze With hunger; let me fill (no more!) My wallet from that copious store; Next year, when melons are full-blown, Be sure I shall repay the loan! “Lend me a little corn!”—Absurd! Of course she will not hear a word; Thou wilt not win, for all thy pain, From bulging sacks a single grain. “Be off and scrape the binns!” she cries: “Who sang in June, in winter dies.” Thus doth the ancient tail impart Fit moral for a miser’s heart; Bids him all charity forget And draw his purse-strings tighter yet. May colic chase such scurvy knaves With pangs internal to their graves! A sorry fabulist, indeed, Who fancied that the winter’s need Would drive thee to subsist, forlorn, On Flies, on grubs, on grains of corn; No need was ever thine of those, For whom the honied fountain flows. What matters winter? All thy kin Beneath the earth are gathered in; Thou sleepest with unwaking heart, While the frail body falls apart In rags that unregarded lie, Save by the Ant’s rapacious eye. She, groping greedily, one day Makes of thy shrivelled corpse her prey; Dissects the trunk, gnaws limb from limb, Concocts, according to her whim, A salad such grim housewives know, A tit-bit saved for hours of snow. III That, gentlemen, is truly told, Unlike the fairy-tale of old; But finds it favour in his sight, Who grabs at farthings, day and night? Pot-bellied, crooked-fingered, he Would rule the world with L.S.D.