03-02-2015, 10:35 AM
The following is an account of one man’s trial with a pack of hungry birds on an island by himself:
Deliverance had come in due degrees
when providence had furnished me with corn,
but savages had spied my growing ears,
and waited for a time I should be gone.
They were a sundry band of thieving fowl
who perched above the blade in steady watch,
but some I saw were like a common crow.
I had a mind to save my kingdom’s bread
and especially I had in mind those people
who inhabited therein, and were at present
very much in need of some subsistence.
By this, it seemed no act of squander to let fly
and use some shot upon the rabble, murder
Or whatever appellation I deemed fit.
When this occurred, a little cloud of fowl
that had no doubt been spoiling my crop
uprose, it seems, to peck away my hopes.
How steady was their looming presence and
How fast they could have eaten all my store
was pressed into a matter in my breast,
as I staid close by to load my gun
and watch the plumage in my bower.
They roosted in the nearby crowns of trees
and I swear if they were human and not
as they were, they may have brooded more
upon the lot that brought their need of crime.
They may have born a certain countenance
which is familiar and yet foreign to most men
and clearly labels them as bandits, rogues,
and villains all around who bear the mark
of scowling felony engraved on their face.
Yet these I took, if they were seen as men,
To be a desperate cutpurse sort of thieves
That could scarce hold their tongue to squawk or eat,
the kind that dragged a nation down in packs
as wolves could gnaw the hind-legs off a horse.
So trite they seemed when I had scarcely left
and hid myself behind a hedge to spy them.
They would descend as if the memory
of me was only in their present view.
Such was my posture as a man to beast.
For I had leisure now to shoot of them.
They may have eeked me of a peck-load,
But the caution in my chest did not prevent
me in the execution of design.
It was a providence that sailed my shot
and carried out my wish for three dead birds
which I had hung to make a chain of terror,
as I would do with a mutineer.
When life had fled their corpses they were mine
to use for miracles and reaping of
my daily store of sustenance and bread,
what wonder when the birds would squawk no more
and my scarecrow proved itself un-hollow.
Upon reflection of this scene I think
It was an unexpected thing to see them there,
and was I not delivered in my way
I fancy that my eyes would turn like theirs
from heavy drinking of my Spanish rum,
that perhaps my neck would jerk like theirs did
and that my spirits would be drained by noon.
In such a case I would have left my state
for honest Poll whom I had taught to speak
He would bemoan of me “where did you go
Where is the poor forsaken man, Crusoe?”
Deliverance had come in due degrees
when providence had furnished me with corn,
but savages had spied my growing ears,
and waited for a time I should be gone.
They were a sundry band of thieving fowl
who perched above the blade in steady watch,
but some I saw were like a common crow.
I had a mind to save my kingdom’s bread
and especially I had in mind those people
who inhabited therein, and were at present
very much in need of some subsistence.
By this, it seemed no act of squander to let fly
and use some shot upon the rabble, murder
Or whatever appellation I deemed fit.
When this occurred, a little cloud of fowl
that had no doubt been spoiling my crop
uprose, it seems, to peck away my hopes.
How steady was their looming presence and
How fast they could have eaten all my store
was pressed into a matter in my breast,
as I staid close by to load my gun
and watch the plumage in my bower.
They roosted in the nearby crowns of trees
and I swear if they were human and not
as they were, they may have brooded more
upon the lot that brought their need of crime.
They may have born a certain countenance
which is familiar and yet foreign to most men
and clearly labels them as bandits, rogues,
and villains all around who bear the mark
of scowling felony engraved on their face.
Yet these I took, if they were seen as men,
To be a desperate cutpurse sort of thieves
That could scarce hold their tongue to squawk or eat,
the kind that dragged a nation down in packs
as wolves could gnaw the hind-legs off a horse.
So trite they seemed when I had scarcely left
and hid myself behind a hedge to spy them.
They would descend as if the memory
of me was only in their present view.
Such was my posture as a man to beast.
For I had leisure now to shoot of them.
They may have eeked me of a peck-load,
But the caution in my chest did not prevent
me in the execution of design.
It was a providence that sailed my shot
and carried out my wish for three dead birds
which I had hung to make a chain of terror,
as I would do with a mutineer.
When life had fled their corpses they were mine
to use for miracles and reaping of
my daily store of sustenance and bread,
what wonder when the birds would squawk no more
and my scarecrow proved itself un-hollow.
Upon reflection of this scene I think
It was an unexpected thing to see them there,
and was I not delivered in my way
I fancy that my eyes would turn like theirs
from heavy drinking of my Spanish rum,
that perhaps my neck would jerk like theirs did
and that my spirits would be drained by noon.
In such a case I would have left my state
for honest Poll whom I had taught to speak
He would bemoan of me “where did you go
Where is the poor forsaken man, Crusoe?”
