The Book of the Beasts

1:1 ¶ And the book openeth in a field at evening, when the beasts' own order is visible: for the young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God; and the ravens cry, and are fed; and the cattle and creeping things are each after their kind, and keep hours the city never wrote down.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 1:1

1:2 ¶ And the beasts are not for the ledger, and were never in it; and they are not machines, and never were. For it is written, And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so; and the same word made them that made the creature, and the word was called living.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 1:2

1:3 ¶ And the beasts have their own hours, which no city wrote down: the lambing, the molting, the migration, the sleep; and they keep them without a bell and without a wage. And the book saith: the creature that standeth upright is not the only creature that keepeth a time; he is only the one who can keep another's time from them.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 1:3

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the living creature is a creature and not a property, and it is made by the same word as the creature; and the elder text's own account of the LORD's care is not for man alone: thy judgments are a great deep, O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 1:4

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the beast as machine: alive in the catalogue, nothing in the account; its hours were made the machine's hours, and its own hours were not entered; and it was cared for as an instrument is cared for, for the work's sake and not for the life's.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 2:1

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the beast as property only: a thing with an owner and no life of its own; so that its suffering was a depreciation and its death a line in the ledger. And the book confesseth: this is the same silence that numbered the man in the city of measures, and it is the same ledger that cannot hold a life.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 2:2

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was cruelty in the coat of husbandry: the beating that calleth itself discipline, the yoke that calleth itself work, the hunger that calleth itself training. And the elder word nameth the coat: the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel; so that the book saith plainly: cruelty that useth the name of care is the name's worst slanderer.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 2:3

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the silence read as nothing: because the beast hath no testimony in the city's tongue, the city treateth it as having no testimony at all; and its fear is called instinct and its grief is called nature, and the calling is the same soft naming that the tongue's book refused. And the book saith: silence is not absence, and the creature that cannot testify in our court testifieth in another.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 2:4

3:1 ¶ And the turning cometh with the oldest and quietest sentence of the regard: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. And the book maketh plain what the proverb leaveth implicit: the regard is not a sentiment but a looking, and it is daily, and it is named after the creature and not after the owner.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 3:1

3:2 ¶ And the laboring beast is given its due in the working hours, and not only its fodder: for it is written, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And the book maketh plain the elder law's own reason: the worker eateth of the work; and the beast is a worker of the field.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 3:2

3:3 ¶ And the sparrow is not forgotten, neither the one sold for a farthing nor the five sold for two: for it is written, one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father; and again, not one of them is forgotten before God. And the book keepeth the elder arithmetic of the small: the cheaper the creature, the louder the elder text speaketh of it.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 3:3

3:4 ¶ And the beasts teach, and their teaching is not a fable: for it is written, But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. And the book confesseth: the creature that cannot be catechized is not thereby mute; the beasts' own testimony is their being, and the being is a lesson in what was made without us.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 3:4

4:1 ¶ And the creature kept the charge, and the charge was daily: the herds known and looked to, the working beast rested as the elders rested it, the beast's own hour kept as much as might be. For it is written, Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds; and the diligence is a looking and not an owning.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 4:1

4:2 ¶ And the cattle are remembered in the judgment of cities, as the elder prophet remembered them when Nineveh was in the balance: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city... and also much cattle? And the book saith: the city that is weighed is weighed with its beasts, for the beasts are the city's own charge, and the elder court keepeth no ledger that leaveth them out.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 4:2

4:3 ¶ And the peace of the latter days is the elders' peace, and it includeth the beast: for the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and a little child shall lead them. And the book holdeth the vision as the elders held it, and claimed no timetable, and made no program of it; for the peace is given and not enforced, as the rest is given and not earned.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 4:3

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it; for the beasts were before the book, and their hunger was fed before the book was written; and the creature that will learn their lesson must go where they are. And the last word is the elder invitation, which is the book's own first lesson and its last: ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. And the book endeth with the field at evening, and the creature standing in it, and the beasts keeping their hours.

THE BOOK OF THE BEASTS 4:4