IV

     He bewhimpered his welting, and I
     Scarce thought it enough for him:  so,
     By degrees, through the upper box-grove,
     Within me an old story hove,
     Of a man and a dog:  you shall know.

     V

     The dog was of novel breed,
     The Shannon retriever, untried: 
     His master, an old Irish lord,
     In an oaken armchair snored
     At midnight, whisky beside.

     VI

     Perched up a desolate tower,
     Where the black storm-wind was a whip
     To set it nigh spinning, these two
     Were alone, like the last of a crew,
     Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

     VII

     The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;
     He quitted his couch on the rug,
     Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;
     And, finding the signals unmarked,
     Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

     VIII

     He pulled till his master jumped
     For fury of wrath, and laid on
     With the length of a tough knotted staff,
     Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,
     And leave a sheer carcase anon.

     IX

     That done, he sat, panted, and cursed
     The vile cross of this brute:  nevermore
     Would he house it to rear such a cur! 
     The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,
     Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

     X

     Then his master raised head too, and sniffed: 
     It struck him the dog had a sense
     That honoured both dam and sire. 
     You have guessed how the tower was afire. 
     The Shannon retriever dates thence.

     XI

     I mused:  saw the pup ease his heart
     Of his instinct for chasing, and sink
     Overwrought by excitement so new: 
     A scene that for Koby to view
     Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

     XII

     And part sympathetic, and part
     Imitatively, raged my poor brute;
     And I, not thinking of ill,
     Doing eviller:  nerves are still
     Our savage too quick at the root.

     XIII

     They spring us:  I proved it, albeit
     I played executioner then
     For discipline, justice, the like. 
     Yon stick I had handy to strike
     Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

     XIV

     You read in your History books,
     How the Prince in his youth had a mind
     For governing gently his land. 
     Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,
     When the temper is other than kind!

     XV

     At home all was well; Koby’s ribs
     Not so sore as my thoughts:  if, beguiled,
     He forgives me, his criminal air
     Throws a shade of Llewellyn’s despair
     For the hound slain for saving his child.