Underwoods

A Portrait

I am a kind of farthing dip,

Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;

A blue-behinded ape, I skip

Upon the trees of Paradise.

At mankind's feast, I take my place

In solemn, sanctimonious state,

And have the air of saying grace

While I defile the dinner plate.

I am "the smiler with the knife,"

The battener upon garbage, I -

Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life,

Were it not better far to die?

Yet still, about the human pale,

I love to scamper, love to race,

To swing by my irreverent tail

All over the most holy place;

And when at length, some golden day,

The unfailing sportsman, aiming at,

Shall bag, me - all the world shall say:

THANK GOD, AND THERE'S AN END OF THAT!