Explore "Our Dum'D Animals" by Franklin P. Adams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What time I seek my virtuous couch to steal / Some surcease from the labours of the day, / Ere silence like a poultice comes to heal -- / In short, when I prepare to hit the hay; / Ere slumber's chains (I quote from Moore) have bound me, / I hear a lot of noises all around me.
Time was when falling off the well-known log / Were harder far than falling off to sleep; / But that was ere my neighbour's gentle dog / Began to think he was defending sheep. / From twelve to two his barking and his howling / Accompanies two torn cats' nightly yowling.
At two-ten sharp the parrot in the flat / Across the way his monologue essays. / At three, again, as Gilbert says, the cat; / At four a milkman's horse, exulted, neighs. / At six-fifteen, nor does it ever vary, / I hear the dulcet tones of a canary.
Each living thing I love; I love the birds; / The beasts in field and forest, too, I love, / But I have writ these poor, if metric words, / To query which, by all the pow'rs above, / Of all the animals -- pray tell me, some one -- / Is called by any courtesy a dumb one?