He immediately regrets throwing the stick. Lawrence writes, "I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! / I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education / For he seemed to me again like a king, / like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, / now due to be crowned again./ And so, I missed my chance with one of the Lords / of life. /And I have something to expiate; / a pettiness." Animals deserve to be revered and, as this poem shows, humans can experience guilt when they treat them poorly. Most children, when they learn that the hamburger that they are eating is a dead cow, are horrified, disgusted, or, at least, a bit grossed out.
Research shows some horrifying truths about animals being used for humans consumption. The web site "Go Veg" writes, "Every year in the United States, more than 25 billion animals are slaughtered for food. That is almost 4 times the global population! Raising animals on factory farms is cruel and ecologically devastating. Eating animals is bad for our health, leading directly to many diseases and illnesses, including heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and obesity." Not only are the numbers staggering but the cruelty that these animals are subjected to is chilling. Gail A. Eisnitz book "Slaughterhouse" takes the reader on a journey from one slaughterhouse to another through the United States. Individuals interviewed for this book admitted to deliberately beating, strangling, boiling, or dismembering animals alive in an effort to "keep the production line running". People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that operates under the simple principle that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. On their web site, PETA , they write about animals being tortured. "Chickens have their beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cows and pigs are castrated without painkillers.