A Portrait

I am a kind of farthing dip,Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;A blue-behinded ape, I skipUpon the trees of Paradise.

At mankind's feast, I take my placeIn solemn, sanctimonious state,And have the air of saying graceWhile 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 tailAll 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!