The Shaming*

The Shaming

 

The Fifth Rhyme of Jean Ami

 

A smug blue heron was awhile

 

A tenant on my lake,

 

And crept along the shallows,

Where a minnow he would take

 

He would not deign my company

And kept a certain mood,

 

That underscored

A queer conceit

 

And sniffy attitude!

 

But one day, fairest egrets

Seemed to tumble from the sky

And took the heron’s home for theirs -

 

Oh, how they pleased my eye!

 

Much lovelier than him, I thought,

So graceful, smooth, and sleek

 

I was most pleased

That they had come

 

And bid them stay the week

 

The heron rudely stood near them;

The egrets held their ground

 

As they would not endure the slight

And made a croaking sound

 

And yet there was no more to do;

They knew not war nor word;

 

And for some days,

They shared the lake,

As is the way of birds

 

But in the stilted

Peace that came,

 

The heron flew away

Into the scroll of history

 

And fable of today

 

The comely egrets didn't care

And left soon afterward -

 

Indifferent to the heron’s plight,

The shaming of a bird.[1]

 

Thoughts of Camille Du Monde: Entry Seven

 

This ballad speaks to the smallness of every man. Consider that the heron and the egret are similar in most ways, but the poet’s dislike of the heron causes him to praise and prefer the egrets, caring little about the heron's shaming. But all of us are like that concerning other people. Those we do not like, we see as uglier than those we love or do not know, even uglier than those we have disliked in bygone days. When they experience adversity, we see but justice in their suffering; and in their pain, we see a kind of grace, for grace, is ever a part of justice. One might suppose that when harm comes to a life we disapprove of, our faith in God increases by the satisfaction of our hate, which we mistake for an admirable love of justice.

 

This phenomenon flourishes among the nobles of Earth.

 

A lord may disapprove of a rival’s plan, and if it fails, (even if by known deceit or evil action), he will see in that plan’s collapse both a proof of God’s existence and an affirmation that God is of one mind with him, at least where his rival’s plan was concerned. All men are hypocrites, I suppose, but the loftier a man’s station, the uglier, and more frequent this sin is likely to be.

 

For a powerful man is freer to flaunt his vanity as a character virtue.

 

And if he is stronger and more cunning than his peers, he will have others around him to feed his vanity and even make sacrifices on its behalf, sometimes at the price of their public shame. Indeed, such lesser men will come to regard their sire’s enactment of hypocrisy as a kind of wisdom engendered by a nobler mind.

 

Of course, poor men are hypocrites, too, but their hypocrisy is less dangerous to others and often more amusing than it is condemning. And if they are good at what they do, they have less need to appear to be something that they are not. In fact, if they are good, it is to their benefit to be seen for what they are. That is not often true for the powerful man because he is chiefly good at getting and keeping power, a dubious virtue that requires him to practice deception at all times. Yet rarely does anyone favor considerations that are not believed to serve him best.