Page 39 - Poetry-Animals

Which I would think to hide and make him find,
He’d steal up soft and snap it from behind.

And then to see him scamper
Was something of a damper
On training. How he’d frisk and twist and bound,
And toss the bone and catch it off the ground,
And wait, crouched low before, with hips held high
Till I approached him, when away he’d fly!

And then I’d shout: “Charge down, sir!
You’ll never win renown, sir,
Behaving so.” But by and by he came
To understand me and to find my game
More fun than his: he’d watch my wave of hand,
Or stop and listen to my least command.

So he was wise and sober
Some time before October,
When dogs and hunters take their tramps afield.
The first day he was puzzled, nor revealed
His sense; the next he nosed about; the third
He trailed, he pointed, and he fetched his bird.

He never made a blunder,
But hunted to the wonder
Of all who knew him. When another gun
Than mine had killed, and other dogs were done
With searching for the bird, my side he’d leave,
Go far within the bush, and then retrieve.

There never was a cartridge
More sure to find a partridge
Than he. What pride he took to fetch his bird—
The puppy with his partridge! Wilding heard
It all at night, I fancied, when Luray
Crept in his stall and close beside him lay.

They always slept together
In frosty autumn weather.
They loved each other. Wilding munched his hay
And breathed warm kisses on the dog; Luray

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