Great big lolloping lovable things! <br />Rolling and tumbling on every lawn, <br />Tearing at slippers and bones and wings- <br />Wonderful loot from the ash-heap drawn: <br />Foxhound puppies <br />Contented puppies <br />Dipping your ears in the dews of dawn! <br />Lapping your porridge at farm-house doors, <br />Cracking a biscuit, robbing a nest <br />Printing your tracks upon kitchen floors, <br />Dodging a broom when the cooks protest; <br />Foxhound puppies, <br />Delinquent puppies, <br />Cursed for a moment and then caressed! <br />Wandering out where the spaniels walk, <br />Following slow when the guns go by, <br />Streaking for home when the twelve-bores talk, <br />Clumsy and puzzled and suddenly shy; <br />Foxhound puppies <br />Bewildered puppies <br />Lone and unwanted and wondering why! <br />Never mind puppies, your day will come; <br />By distant coverts your kingdoms wait, <br />When the spaniels doze and the guns are dumb <br />And hoofs are loud by the bridle gate; <br />Foxhound puppies, <br />Yet scarcely puppies, <br />Raised as you are to a hound's estate. <br />Lost will your lolloping ways be then, <br />Your timid glance and your shrinking pose, <br />As you shoulder the gorse in glade and glen, <br />Lifting the line that your tongues disclose; <br />Foxhound puppies, <br />No longer puppies, <br />But trusted names that the huntsman knows!<br /><br />William Henry Ogilvie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/foxhound-puppies/
