A Dog Story.
I.
He was strong and trim, and a good sized cur.
A giant of dogs; with soft silk fur,
Poised head, of an intellectual size,
And two straight, luminous hero eyes.
A tail whose gestures were eloquence;
A bark with a germ of common sense.
And this dog looked, upon the whole,
As if he had gathered some crumbs of soul
That fell from the feast God spreads for man—
Looked like a line of the human plan.
There went with his strong, well-balanced stride
A dignity oft to man denied.
God’s humblest brutes, where’er we turn,
Are full of lessons for man to learn.
That night that he crouched by the yielding door,
And two grim, murderous thieves, or more,
Had bribed the locks with their hooks of steel,
He fought with more than a henchman’s zeal
For sleeping loved ones’ treasures and life:—
He conquered rogue, and bullet, and knife.
That day that he walked by the river’s brink,
Thinking (if certain men can think),
And saw distress with a quick, sure eye,
And heard the half-choked drowning cry
A living life boat, soon he bore
The half-killed man to a welcome shore.
And when the wife of the rescued one
Wept him her love for the great deed done,
And fondled him in a warm embrace,
He talked with his honest, kind old face,
And said, “I have shown you nothing new;
It is what we live and love to do.
In lake or river, in sea or bay,
My race are rescuers every day;
In the snowy gulfs, ’mid hills above
My race brings life to the race we love.”
II.
He was sick and reeling—deadly faint;
He roamed the streets with a piteous plaint.
He had lips afoam, and eyes hard set;
He asked the mercy of all he met.
He drearily ran his death-strown race;
He found no pity in any face.
He glanced at an old friend with a moan,
There came to him back a well-aimed stone.
No cure for him in his strange distress,
No tender nursing and kind caress!
All fled or fought when he came near;
The world seemed mad with rage and fear.
He searched for an unfrequented way;
He would have prayed if a beast could pray.
For he who man had deified
Was now all mercy of man denied;
He who to save man’s life had flown
Now had to fight man for his own.
* * * * *
The soul of the humble brute has fled:
The grand old dog lies safely dead.
O, man-like brain, and God-like heart!
You were made to carry a noble part.
What spirit of vile Satanic breed
Had sowed in your veins the poison-seed
That turned to a curse your honest breath,—
That shaped your lips to a fount of death?
Sleep well old friend; your teeth of flame
Grew not from a soul of vice and shame.
Sleep well, old saint; not yours the will
To plant the world with the germs that kill.
Not yours the conscious guilt that lies
In men who ravage with open eyes.
You did, old dog, the best you knew,
And that is better than most men do;
And if ever I get to the great Just Place
I shall look for your honest, kind old face.