The Battle of the Rats and the Weasels

The weasels live, no more than cats, / On terms of friendship with the rats; / And, were it not that these / Through doors contrive to squeeze / Too narrow for their foes, / The animals long-snouted / Would long ago have routed, / And from the planet scouted / Their race, as I suppose.

One year it did betide, / When they were multiplied, / An army took the field / Of rats, with spear and shield, / Whose crowded ranks led on / A king named Ratapon. / The weasels, too, their banner / Unfurl'd in warlike manner. / As Fame her trumpet sounds, / The victory balanced well; / Enrich'd were fallow grounds / Where slaughter'd legions fell; / But by said trollop's tattle, / The loss of life in battle / Thinn'd most the rattish race / In almost every place; / And finally their rout / Was total, spite of stout / Artarpax and Psicarpax, / And valiant Meridarpax,[1] / Who, cover'd o'er with dust, / Long time sustain'd their host / Down sinking on the plain. / Their efforts were in vain; / Fate ruled that final hour, / (Inexorable power! ) / And so the captains fled / As well as those they led; / The princes perish'd all. / The undistinguish'd small / In certain holes found shelter, / In crowding, helter-skelter; / But the nobility / Could not go in so free, / Who proudly had assumed / Each one a helmet plumed; / We know not, truly, whether / For honour's sake the feather, / Or foes to strike with terror; / But, truly, 'twas their error. / Nor hole, nor crack, nor crevice / Will let their head-gear in; / While meaner rats in bevies / An easy passage win; -- / So that the shafts of fate / Do chiefly hit the great.