The friend of all our friendships And the foeman of our foes.

The Dog

by Don Marquis

When Adam quitted the Garden,

Along with his buxom wife,

For to delve and swink and swither

And earn his way in life,

The Animals sidled about him

To grunt and whine good-bye — |

But little enough their grief was,

However they piped the eye.

A tear from the rhino trickled,

But he did not really care.

The hippo mumbled politely,

Grumbled the hypocrite bear.

One hump of the camel quivered

As a chin that shakes with grief, 

But his other hump was perky

Like it really felt relief.

The walrus sniveled dankly

In a quite perfunctory way,

And the bull was patently anxious

To get back to his hay.

And the porcupine and narwhal,

The wallaby and giraffe,

Parodied sorrow so broadly

They made the penguin laugh.

“Which of you brutes so mournful,”

The watching Angel said,

“Will follow Man from Eden

To toil for daily bread?

And which of you beasts so tearful

Will give him more than tears,

Faithful to his footsteps

Through all his outcast years?

Come forward,” said the Angel,

“Before the barriers close,

You friend of all his friendships,

And foeman of his foes!’

The sly little seal, he sniggered,

Chuckled the kangaroo,

The chimpanzee pulled a razzberrie

And winked at the cockatoo,

His thumb on his proboscis

The mangy ape did place,

And flickered his ribald digits

Right in Adam’s face.

And they shuffled and lurched and ambled,

Each to his separate den —

And that was the honest measure

Of what they felt for men.

The Angel smiled in knowledge,

He permitted himself a tear,

And if he weren’t an Angel

I'd say that he sneered a sneer —

(They see so much, these Angels,

As they ramble here and there,

That we must try and forgive them

If now and again they wear

That manner of sad amusement,

That faintly cynical air).

But a pup there was that lingered

In most abject unease;

He lay too broken-hearted

Even to bite his fleas.

His tail swished desolation,

And its swish was his only sound;

A splay-foot pup with a belly

That grieved along the ground;

His ears were the dragging cypress

And his eyes were love profound.

He looked not at the Angel,

But of a sudden he rose

And he ran and nuzzled Adam,

And his soul was in his nose —

He scampered out of the Garden

Before the gates could close,

The friend of all our friendships

And the foeman of our foes.