The Fox at the Point of Death

                          John Gay

                A fox, in life's extream decay,

        Weak, sick and faint, expiring lay;

        All appetite had left his maw,

        And age disarmed his mumbling jaw.

        His num'rous race around him stand

        To learn their dying sire's command;

        He raised his head with whining moan,

        And thus was heard the feeble tone.

                "Ah sons, from evil ways depart,

        My crimes lye heavy on my heart.

        See, see, the murdered geese appear!

        Why are those bleeding turkeys there?

        Why all around this cackling train

        Who haunts my ears for chicken slain?"

                The hungry foxes round them stared.

        And for the promised feast prepared.

        "Where, Sir, is all this dainty cheer?

        Not turkey, goose, nor hen is here:

        These are the phantoms of your brain,

        And your sons lick their lips in vain"   

                "O gluttons," says the drooping sire,

        "Restrain inordinate desire,

        Your liqu'rish taste you shall deplore.

        When peace of conscience is no more.

        Does not the hound betray our pace,

        And gins and guns destroy our race?

        Thieves dread the searching eye of power,

        And never feel the quiet hour.

        Old age, (which few of us will know)

        Now puts a period to my woe.

        Would you true happiness attain,

        Let honesty your passion rein;

        So live in credit and esteem,

        And, the good name you lost, redeem."

                "The counsel's good", a fox replies,

        "Could we perform what you advise.

        Think, what our ancestors have done:

        A line of thieves from son to son;

        To us descends the long disgrace,

        And infamy hath marked our race.

        Though we, like harmless sheep, should feed,

        Honest in thought, in word, and deed,

        Whatever hen-roost is decreased,

        We shall be thought to share the feast.

        The change shall never be believed,

        A lost good-name is ne'er retrieved"

                "Nay then", replies the feeble Fox,

        "(But hark! I hear a hen that clocks)

        Go, but be mod'rate in your food;

        A chicken too might do me good"

I found this verse by John "Beggar's Opera" Gay quite by chance, I was trying to trace a poem with opening lines which had struck me for their directness:-

"The wanton troopers riding by

Have shot my fawn, and it will die"

But when I did discover it in a war-time Pelican of animal poetry, the rest of the poem despite being by Marvell struck me as over-sentimental. The fox poem was on the next page and was so easy to read with its unexpected volte face last line, after all the moralising, that I decided it was a good choice. I have left in Gay's spellings and his seeming enthusiasm for commas.

Perhaps it comes from his "Fifty-one Fables in Verse". He was buried in Westminster Abbey. his tomb bearing his own couplet:-

"Life is a jest, and all things show it.

I thought it once, and now I know it!"