The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dog's Book of Verse, by Various

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Title: The Dog's Book of Verse

Author: Various

Release Date: September 9, 2006 [EBook #19226]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Dog's Book

of Verse

Collected by

J. Earl Clauson

"'I never barked when out of season;
I never bit without a reason;
I ne'er insulted weaker brother,
Nor wronged by fraud or force another;'
Though brutes are placed a rank below,
Happy for man could he say so."

[Illustration: Crest]

Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
Publishers

Copyright, 1916

BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

(INCORPORATED)

TO

THE MEMORY OF

JACK,

AN AIREDALE

PREFACE

Matthew Arnold, explaining why those were his most popular poems
which dealt with his canine pets, Geist, Kaiser, and Max, said
that while comparatively few loved poetry, nearly everyone loved
dogs.

The literature of the Anglo-Saxon is rich in tributes to the
dog, as becomes a race which beyond any other has understood and
developed its four-footed companions. Canine heroes whose
intelligence and faithfulness our prose writers have celebrated
start to the memory in scores--Bill Sykes's white shadow, which
refused to be separated from its master even by death; Rab,
savagely devoted; the immortal Bob, "son of battle"--true souls
all, with hardly a villain among them for artistic contrast.
Even Red Wull, the killer, we admire for his courage and lealty.

Within these covers is a selection from a large body of dog
verse. It is a selection made on the principle of human appeal.
Dialect, and the poems of the earlier writers whose diction
strikes oddly on our modern ears, have for the most part been
omitted. The place of such classics as may be missed is filled
by that vagrant verse whic