The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)An Asinine Election
B
The beasts’ republic decided
To be with a single ruler at last
As its absolute head provided.
Electoral billets were written;
Intrigues on every side were rife;
With party zeal all were bitten.
The asses’ committee was aided;
Cockades, whose colors were black, gold, and red,
They boastfully paraded.
Who yet were afraid of voting,
So greatly they dreaded the outcry coarse
The long-eared party denoting.
As a candidate, greater and greater
Waxed the noise, and an old long-ear, to his shame,
Shouted out, “Thou art only a traitor!
One drop of asses’ blood proper.
No ass art thou, and I almost know
That a foreign mare was thy dropper!
Quite answers the zebra’s description;
The nasal twang of thy voice is allied
To the Hebrew as well as Egyptian.
A dull ass, of an intellect paltry;
The depths of ass-nature to thee are unknown;
Thou hear’st not its mystical psalt’ry.
That sound which all others surpasses;
An ass am I, and each hair in the skin
Of my tail the hair of an ass is.
A German ass am I solely—
The same as my fathers, who all were so brave,
So thoughtful, demure, and so holy.
Or practising gallantry gaily,
But trotted off with the sack to the mill
In frolicsome fashion daily.
Their skins, their mortal covering;
Their happy spirits, high up in the sky,
Complacently o’er us are hovering.
That we fain would resemble you ever;
And from the path that duty points out
We’ll swerve a finger’s breadth never.
From such long-eared worthies descended!
From every housetop I’d fain shout with glee,
‘An ass I was born—how splendid!’
Was of genuine German extraction;
From my mother, a German ass of worth,
I sucked milk with great satisfaction.
Like my fathers, who now are departed,
To stand by the asses—yes, stand to the end
By the asses, so dear and true-hearted.
To choose your king from the asses;
A mighty ass-kingdom we thus will found,
They being the governing classes.
As ostlers we will not demean us;
Away with the horses! Long live, hurrah,
The king of the asinine genus!”
The asses cheered him proudly;
They all, in fact, were national,
And with their hoofs stamped loudly.
They put as a decoration;
He wagged his tail (though nothing he said)
With evident gratification.