Bird Parliament · 5 of 20

The Parrot

Then came the subtle Parrot in a coat Greener than Greensward, and about his Throat A Collar ran of sub-sulphureous Gold; And in his Beak a Sugar-plum he troll’d, That all his Words with luscious Lisping ran, And to this Tune—‘O cruel Cage, and Man More iron still who did confine me there, Who else with him whose Livery I wear Ere this to his Eternal Fount had been, And drunk what should have kept me ever-green. But now I know the Place, and I am free To go, and all the Wise will follow Me. Some’—and upon the Nightingale one Eye He leer’d—‘for nothing but the Blossom sigh: But I am for the luscious Pulp that grows Where, and for which the Blossom only blows: And which so long as the Green Tree provides What better grows along Kaf’s dreary Sides? And what more needful Prophet there than He Who gives me Life to nip it from the Tree?’

To whom the Tajidar—‘O thou whose Best In the green leaf of Paradise is drest, But whose Neck kindles with a lower Fire— O slip the collar off of base Desire, And stand apparell’d in Heav’n’s Woof entire! This Life that hangs so sweet about your Lips But, spite of all your Khizar, slips and slips, What is it but itself the coarser Rind Of the True Life withinside and behind, Which he shall never never reach unto Till the gross Shell of Carcase he break through?’

For what said He, that dying Hermit, whom Your Prophet came to, trailing through the Gloom His Emerald Vest, and tempted—‘Come with Me, And Live.’ The Hermit answered—‘Not with Thee. Two Worlds there are, and This was thy Design, And thou hast got it; but The Next is mine; Whose Fount is this life’s Death, and to whose Side Ev’n now I find my Way without a Guide.’