Strike not thy dog with a stick! I did it yesterday: Not to undo though I gained The Paradise: heavy it rained
On Kobold's flanks, and he lay. Little Bruno, our long-ear pup, From his hunt had come back to my heel. I heard a sharp worrying sound,
And Bruno foamed on the ground, With Koby as making a meal. I did what I could not undo Were the gates of the Paradise shut
Behind me: I deemed it was just. I left Koby crouched in the dust, Some yards from the woodman's hut. He bewhimpered his welting, and I
Scarce thought it enough for him: so, By degrees, through the upper box-grove, Within me an old story hove, Of a man and a dog: you shall know.
The dog was of novel breed, The Shannon retriever, untried: His master, an old Irish lord, In an oaken armchair snored
At midnight, whisky beside. Perched up a desolate tower, Where the black storm-wind was a whip To set it nigh spinning, these two
Were alone, like the last of a crew, Outworn in a wave-beaten ship. The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed; He quitted his couch on the rug,
Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked; And, finding the signals unmarked, Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug. He pulled till his master jumped
For fury of wrath, and laid on With the length of a tough knotted staff, Fit to drive the life flying like chaff, And leave a sheer carcase anon.
That done, he sat, panted, and cursed The vile cross of this brute: nevermore Would he house it to rear such a cur! The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,
Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door. Then his master raised head too, and sniffed: It struck him the dog had a sense That honoured both dam and sire.
You have guessed how the tower was afire. The Shannon retriever dates thence. I mused: saw the pup ease his heart Of his instinct for chasing, and sink
Overwrought by excitement so new: A scene that for Koby to view Was the seizure of nerves in a link. And part sympathetic, and part
Imitatively, raged my poor brute; And I, not thinking of ill, Doing eviller: nerves are still Our savage too quick at the root.
They spring us: I proved it, albeit I played executioner then For discipline, justice, the like. Yon stick I had handy to strike
Should have warned of the tyrant in men. You read in your History books, How the Prince in his youth had a mind For governing gently his land.
Ah, the use of that weapon at hand, When the temper is other than kind! At home all was well; Koby's ribs Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,
He forgives me, his criminal air Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair For the hound slain for saving his child.
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