OPEN LETTER
TO: Your Obvious Superiority
FROM: My Humble Individuality, lowly though it may be.
(shamelessly stealing silk's phrases)

O’er a small suburban borough / Once an eagle used to fly,
Making observations thorough / From his station in the sky,
And presenting the appearance / Of an animated V,
Like the gulls that lend coherence / Unto paintings of the sea.

Looking downward at a church in / This attractive little shire,
He beheld a smallish urchin / Shooting arrows at the spire;
In a spirit of derision, / "Look alive!" the eagle said;
And, with infinite precision, / Dropped a feather on his head.

Then the boy, annoyed distinctly / By the freedom of the bird,
Voiced his anger quite succinctly / In a single scathing word;
And he sat him on a barrow, / And he fashioned of this same
Eagle’s feather such an arrow / As was worthy of the name.

Then he tried his bow, and, stringing / It with caution and with care,
Sent that arrow singing, winging / Towards the eagle in the air.
Straight it went, without an error, / And the target, bathed in blood,
Lurched, and lunged, and fell to terra / Firma, landing with a thud.

"Bird of freedom," quoth the urchin, / With an unrelenting frown,
"You shall decorate a perch in / The menagerie in town;
But of feathers quite a cluster / I shall first remove for Ma;
Thanks to you, she’ll have a duster / For her precious objets d’art."

And THE MORAL is that pride is / The precursor of a fall.
Those beneath you to deride is / Not expedient at all.
Howsoever meek and humble / Your inferiors may be,
They perchance may make you tumble, / So respect them. Q.E.D.

Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Domineering Eagle and the Inventive Bratling,
from "Fables for the Frivolous"(~1905)