The Soliloquy Of A Rationalistic Chicken. On The Picture Of A Newly Hatched Chicken Contemplating The Fragments Of Its Native Shell

              MOST strange!
Most queer,— although most excellent a change
Shades of the prison-house, ye disappear!
My fettered thoughts have won a wider range,
          And, like my legs, are free;
No longer huddled up so pitiably:
Free now to pry and probe, and peep and peer,
          And make these mysteries out.
Shall a free-thinking chicken live in doubt?
For now in doubt undoubtedly I am:
  This problem's very heavy on my mind,
And I'm not one to either shirk or sham:
  I won't be blinded, and I won't be blind!
              Now, let me see;
First I would know how did I get in there?
          Then, where was I of yore?
Besides, why didn't I get out before?

              Bless me!
Here are three puzzles (out of plenty more)
Enough to give me nip upon the brain!
          But let me think again.
How do I know I ever was inside?
Now I reflect, it is, I do maintain,
Less than my reason, and beneath my pride
          To think that I could dwell
In such a paltry miserable cell
          As that old shell.
Of course I couldn't! How could I have lain,
Body and beak and feathers, legs and wings,
And my deep heart's sublime imaginings,
          In there?

I meet the notion with profound disdain;
It's quite incredible; since I declare
(And I'm a chicken that you can't deceive)
What I can't understand I won't believe
Where did I come from, then? Ah! where, indeed?
This is a riddle monstrous hard to read.
          I have it!  Why, of course,
All things are moulded by some plastic force
Out of some atoms somewhere up in space,
Fortuitously concurrent anyhow:—
          There, now!
That's plain as is the beak upon my face.

              What's that I hear?
My mother cackling at me! Just her way,
So prejudiced and ignorant I say;
So far behind the wisdom of the day!

              What's old I can't revere.
Hark at her.  'You're a little fool, my dear,
          That's quite as plain, alack!
As is the piece of shell upon your back!'
How bigoted! upon my back, indeed!
          I don't believe it's there:
For I can't see it; and I do declare,
          For all her fond deceivin',
What I can't see I never will believe in!