To find a nest of speckled eggs,
Or watch the spotted spider spin
Or see a serpent shed its skin!
Give me no star-and-garter blue!
I'd rather roam around with you.

Flatten me not with flattery!
Walk with me to the Battery,
And see in glassy tanks the seals,
The sturgeons, flounders, smelt and eels
Disport themselves in ichthyic curves--
And when it gets upon our nerves
Then, while our wabbling taxi honks
I'll tell you all about the Bronx,
Where captive wild things mope and stare
Through grills of steel that bar each lair
Doomed to imprisonment for life--
And you may go and take your wife.

Come to the Park[1] with me;
I'll show you crass stupidity
Which sentences the hawk and fox
To inactivity, and locks
The door of freedom on the lynx
Where puma pines and eagle stinks.
Never a slaver's fetid hold
Has held the misery untold
That crowds the great cats' kennels where
Their vacant eyes glare blank despair
Half crazed by sloth, half dazed by fear