Thoughtless Cruelty
BY CHARLES LAMB
There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — , And should you thousand ages try The life you've taken to supply, You could not do it. You surely must have been devoid Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd A thing which no way you annoy'd — You'll one day rue it. Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say, That's born in April, dies in May; That does but just learn to display His wings one minute, And in the next is vanish'd quite. A bird devours it in his flight — Or come a cold blast in the night, There's no breath in it. The bird but seeks his proper food — And Providence, whose power endu'd That fly with life, when it thinks good, May justly take it. But you have no excuses for't — A life by Nature made so short, Less reason is that you for sport Should shorter make it. A fly a little thing you rate — But, Robert do not estimate A creature's pain by small or great; The greatest being Can have but fibres, nerves, and flesh, And these the smallest ones possess, Although their frame and structure less Escape our seeing.
