Andrew Barton Paterson (Эндрю Бартон Патерсон)
A Dog’s Mistake
He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide, He was just a wand’ring mongrel from the weary world outside; He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair, With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear. He was very poor and humble and content with what he got, So we fed him bones and biscuits, till he heartened up a lot; Then he growled and grew aggressive, treating orders with disdain, Till at last he bit the butcher, which would argue want of brain. Now the butcher, noble fellow, was a sport beyond belief, And instead of bringing actions he brought half a shin of beef, Which he handed on to Fido, who received it as a right And removed it to the garden, where he buried it at night. ’Twas the means of his undoing, for my wife, who’d stood his friend, To adopt a slang expression, ”went in off the deepest end”, For among the pinks and pansies, the gloxinias and the gorse He had made an excavation like a graveyard for a horse. Then we held a consultation which decided on his fate: ’Twas in anger more than sorrow that we led him to the gate, And we handed him the beef-bone as provision for the day, Then we opened wide the portal and we told him, ”On your way.”
Andrew Barton Paterson’s other poems:
945
