But you're a Dog and know your job:
Oft have I seen you hob-a-nob,
And grandly gracious to unbend
With a Great Dane, your humble friend.
As on the lawn with him you roll,
He makes your very being droll.
Yet how you set to work to flout him,
To tease and gnaw and dance about him!
You risk the pressure of his paws,
Plunge all you are within his jaws,
And, swelling to a final rage,
With pin-point teeth the fight engage,
While he submits his silly size
To every insult you devise.
At last, withdrawing from the fuss,
You come and tell your tale to us,
Bearing aloft through every room
Your high tail's undefeated plume,
Till, fed with triumphs, you subside,
And sleep and doff your native pride,
Composing in a wicker fane
Those limbs that terrify the Dane.
So, Soo-Ti, I have tried to praise
Yourself and all your winning ways,
Content if I may guard and please
My little dusky Pekinese.
THE BATH
Hang garlands on the bathroom door;
Let all the passages be spruce;
For, lo, the victim comes once more,
And, ah, he struggles like the deuce!
Bring soaps of many scented sorts;
Let girls in pinafores attend,
With John, their brother, in his shorts,
To wash their dusky little friend.
Their little friend, the dusky dog,
Short-legged and very obstinate,
Faced like a much-offended frog,
And fighting hard against his fate.
No Briton he! From palace-born
Chinese patricians he descends;
He keeps their high ancestral scorn;
His spirit breaks, but never bends.
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