Little Poems in Prose

whose associates they are, and the poet who looks upon them with a fraternal eye. Fie upon the insipid beauty-dog, this absurd quadruped, Pomeranian, King Charles, pug or lap dog, so pleased with himself that he runs indiscreetly between the legs or on the knees of a visitor as if he were sure of pleasing, as boisterous as a child, as silly as a beldame, sometimes as snappish and insolent as a ser- vant. Shame above all upon those four-footed serpents, shivering and idle, that they call Ital- ian greyhounds, and who do not keep in their pointed muzzles enough scent to follow the trail of a friend, or in their flattened heads enough intelligence to play at dominoes. Away to the kennel with all these weari- some parasites. Let them return to their silken and padded kennels. I sing the sorry dog, the poor dog, the homeless dog, the wandering dog, the mountebank dog, the dog whose in- stinct, like that of the poor man, the Bohemian and the actor, is marvellously sharpened by Necessity, that best of mothers, true patron saint of intelligence! I sing the dogs of calamity, whether it be those who wander solitary in the winding ra- vines of great cities or those who say to the hopeless man with blinking, soulful eyes, “Take