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Douglas Alfred Bruce
The Placid Pug, and Other Rhymes

 
To multiply domestic "pledges,"
The family he rears in hedges
Is often limited to nine.
 
 
Such shocking want of savoir faire,
(Surely a symptom of insanity)
Might goad a Bishop to profanity
Were it not for the Belgian hare.
 

SONG FOR VINTNERS

 
THE Lion laps the limpid lake,
The Pard refuses wine,
The sinuous Lizard and the Snake,
The petulant Porcupine,
Agree in this, their thirst to quench
Only with Nature's natural "drench."
 
 
In vain with beer you tempt the Deer,
Or lure the Marmozet;
The early morning Chanticleer,
The painted Parroquet,
Alike, on claret and champagne
Gaze with unfaltering disdain.
 
 
No ale or spirit tempts the Ferret,
No juice of grape the Toad.
In vain towards the "Harp and Merit"
The patient Ox you goad;
Not his in rapture to extol
The praises of the flowing bowl.
 
 
The silent Spider laughs at cider,
The Horse despises port;
The Crocodile (whose mouth is wider
Than any other sort)
Prefers the waters of the Nile
To any of a stronger style.
 
 
The Rabbit knows no "private bar,"
The Pelican will wander
Through arid plains of Kandahar,
Nor ever pause to ponder
Whether in that infernal clime
The clocks converge to "closing time."
 
 
True "bona-fide traveller"
Urging no sophist plea,
How terrible must seem to her
Man's inebriety;
She who in thirsty moments places
Her simple trust in green oases.
 
 
With what calm scorn the Unicorn,
In his remote retreat,
Must contemplate the fervour born
Of old "Château Lafitte."
Conceive the feelings of the Sphinx
Confronted with Columbian drinks!
 
 
And oh! if all this solemn truth
Were dinned into its mind
From earliest years, might not our youth
Regenerate mankind,
Aspire to climb the Heights, and dare
To emulate the Belgian hare?
 

HYMN FOR HUMBLE PEOPLE

 
THE staunch and strenuous Serpent spends his time
In the safe field of serpentine pursuits,
Rightly considering it a social crime
To parody the ways of other brutes.
 
 
Scorning the fraud of alien aspirations,
The snobbishness that apes another class,
Proud, and yet conscious of his limitations,
He bites the dust and grovels in the grass.
 
 
The moral food that keeps him down is Force,
Force to confine his fancies to their beds.
Makes him the laughing-stock of quadrupeds.
 
 
No weak attempt to carol like the Lark,
Fore-doomed to failure and to ridicule,
Troubles his life; he does not wish to bark,
Has no desire to amble like a Mule.
 
 
Having no legs he does not try to walk,
But keeps contentedly his native crawl;
Having no voice he does not strive to talk,
Much less to bellow or to caterwaul.
 
 
Mark the inevitably reached result:
To balance the advantages he missed,
In three departments he may yet exult
To be the only perfect specialist.
 
 
Three arts are his: to writhe, to hiss, to creep.
The Toad's tenacity, the Wombat's wiles,
Or the keen cunning of the crafty Sheep
(And all are artists in their various styles),
 
 
Would vainly challenge them. He reigns supreme
In these the fields of his activity,