Читать книгу The Placid Pug, and Other Rhymes - Douglas Alfred Bruce - Страница 2

BISHOPS and others who inhabit

The mansions of the blest on earth,

Grieved by decline of infant birth,

Have drawn attention to the rabbit.

Not by design these good men work

To raise that beast to heights contested,

But by comparison, suggested,

With those who procreation shirk.

For if a nation's moral status

Be measured by prolific habit,

Between man and the meanest rabbit

There is an evident hiatus.

Each year, by lowest computations,

Six times the rabbit rears her young,

And frequent marriages among

The very closest blood relations

In very tender years ensure

A constant stream of "little strangers,"

Who, quickly grown to gallant rangers,

See that their families endure.

Not theirs to shirk paternal cares,

Moved by considerations sordid,

A child can always "be afforded";

The same applies to Belgian hares.

These noble brutes, pure Duty's pendants,

May live to see their blood vermilion

Coursing through something like a billion

Wholly legitimate descendants.

Knowledge's path is hard and stony,

And some may read who unaware are

That rabbit brown and Belgian hare are

Both members of the genus Coney.

The common hare, who lives in fields

And never goes into a hole,

(In this inferior to the mole)

In all things to the Belgian yields.

He will, immoral brute, decline

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.