“The Bish­op And The ‘Bus­man” opens on a Lon­don route where a devout bish­op, stout and sin­gle-mind­ed, makes it his mis­sion to ride the Put­ney bus dai­ly with a Jew­ish ‘bus­man named Hash Baz Ben. Though Ben bears mul­ti­ple grand names—Jedediah, Solomon, Zabulon—his life remains mod­est, root­ed in dai­ly rou­tines and cul­tur­al cus­toms. The bishop’s obses­sion is pecu­liar: he uses each trip to pub­licly point out Ben’s faith, describ­ing his dietary habits and phys­i­cal fea­tures for all to hear. What begins as an odd­i­ty soon becomes a fixed rit­u­al. The bishop’s enthu­si­as­tic lec­tures blend spir­i­tu­al zeal with unin­vit­ed spec­ta­cle. Crowds, amused at first, fol­low along, treat­ing the affair more like street the­atre than an act of con­ver­sion.

Over time, the joke wears thin. The bishop’s inten­tions, no longer just curi­ous or pas­sion­ate, become bur­den­some and inva­sive. Hash Baz Ben, once tol­er­ant of the dis­play, begins to feel iso­lat­ed and exploit­ed, a liv­ing car­i­ca­ture reduced to rit­u­al­ized ridicule. The once light­heart­ed scenes now sting with rep­e­ti­tion. Peo­ple no longer laugh with him, but at him. The bish­op con­tin­ues, blind to the toll he’s tak­en on a man who nev­er asked to be saved or dis­played. Ben’s iden­ti­ty, both reli­gious and per­son­al, is pushed into pub­lic scruti­ny for an audi­ence that grows increas­ing­ly indif­fer­ent and mock­ing.

After sev­en years of this rou­tine, Hash Baz Ben reach­es his lim­it. With frus­tra­tion mount­ing, he goes to the bishop’s residence—not with vio­lence, but with the dig­ni­ty of a man seek­ing answers. His inquiry is sim­ple but pow­er­ful: why has he, among all oth­ers, been cho­sen for this dai­ly demon­stra­tion? What has kept the bish­op so focused on him? This con­fronta­tion brings a human face to satire, draw­ing atten­tion to the imbal­ance between intent and impact. Behind the bishop’s bois­ter­ous moral­i­ty lies a blind­ness to indi­vid­ual suf­fer­ing. The moment becomes less about the­ol­o­gy and more about respect.

The pow­er of this tale lies in how it han­dles mis­di­rect­ed zeal. The bishop’s cause, root­ed in right­eous­ness, over­looks the actu­al needs of the per­son he claims to help. His faith becomes per­for­ma­tive, his ser­mons repet­i­tive, and his com­pas­sion lost in spec­ta­cle. Mean­while, the ‘bus­man, a sym­bol of endur­ing patience, shows remark­able restraint—his break­ing point a delayed response to years of qui­et humil­i­a­tion. This gap between the bishop’s pur­pose and Ben’s expe­ri­ence expos­es the pit­falls of well-mean­ing intol­er­ance. Reli­gious con­vic­tion, when unmoored from empa­thy, can slip into comedy—or cru­el­ty. The Bab Bal­lads frame this not with bit­ter­ness, but with point­ed satire.

In broad­er terms, this sto­ry com­ments on how minor­i­ty iden­ti­ties are often sub­ject­ed to unwant­ed atten­tion masked as benev­o­lence. Hash Baz Ben doesn’t need sav­ing; he needs to be seen as a man rather than a sub­ject of reli­gious exhi­bi­tion. It’s a les­son in con­sent, in under­stand­ing, and in the sub­tle ways pub­lic ridicule can be cloaked in piety. While the bish­op may think he is offer­ing a gift, what he gives instead is shame. And though satire soft­ens the deliv­ery, the cri­tique remains: con­ver­sion with­out con­sent is not salvation—it’s impo­si­tion. This dynam­ic, han­dled with wit and rhyme, remains rel­e­vant in dis­cus­sions on cul­tur­al respect and bound­aries.

In the final scene, the bishop’s antic­i­pat­ed reply is left dan­gling, but read­ers know the answer is less impor­tant than the ques­tion. The ques­tion is where dig­ni­ty reasserts itself. It is Hash Baz Ben, not the bish­op, who shows moral clar­i­ty in seek­ing truth instead of per­pet­u­at­ing the­ater. Gilbert’s use of humor, rhyme, and inver­sion here does more than entertain—it inter­ro­gates the bound­ary between pas­sion and pre­sump­tion. By giv­ing voice to the long-silenced sub­ject, the poem restores bal­ance in a world that too often favors the loud over the unheard. In doing so, it reminds us that under­stand­ing must always pre­cede judg­ment, and empa­thy must always out­shine per­for­mance.