Explore "The Cardinal and the Dog" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Crescenzio, the Pope's Legate at the High Council, Trent, / -- Year Fifteen hundred twenty-two, March Twenty-five -- intent / On writing letters to the Pope till late into the night, / Rose, weary, to refresh himself, and saw a monstrous sight: / (I give mine Author's very words: he penned, I reindite.)
A black Dog of vast bigness, eyes flaming, ears that hung / Down to the very ground almost, into the chamber sprung / And made directly for him, and laid himself right under / The table where Crescenzio wrote -- who called in fear and wonder / His servants in the ante-room, commanded every one / To look for and find out the beast: but, looking, they found none.
The Cardinal fell melancholy, then sick, soon after died: / And at Verona, as he lay on his death-bed, he cried / Aloud to drive away the Dog that leapt on his bedside. / Heaven keep us Protestants from harm: the rest... no ill betide!