Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have killed 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 destroyed A thing which no way you annoyed- 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 vanished 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 endued 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.