Said a monkey unto me: <br />"How I'm glad I am not you! <br />See, I swing from tree to tree, <br />Something that you cannot do. <br />In gay greenery I drown; <br />Swift to skyey hights I scale: <br />As you watch me hang head down <br />Don't you wish you had a tail? <br /> <br />"Don't you wish that you could wear <br />In the place of stuffy clothes, <br />Just a silky coat of hair, <br />Never shoes to cramp your toes? <br />Never need to toil for bread, <br />Round you nuts and fruit and spice; <br />And with palm tuft for a bed <br />Happily to crack your lice?" <br /> <br />Said I: "You are right, maybe: <br />Witting naught of wordly woe, <br />Gloriously you are free, <br />And of death you nothing know. <br />Envying your monkey mind, <br />Innocent of blight and bale, <br />As I touch my bald behind <br />How I wish I had a tail!" <br /> <br />So in toils of trouble caught, <br />Oft I wonder with a sigh <br />If that blue-bummed ape is not <br /> Happier than I?<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ape-and-i/
