In Animal House (by which title I call <br />A dwelling whose true name is not that at all) <br />There are dogs on the sofas and cats on the chairs; <br />Wherever you sit you get covered with hairs; <br />While your progress is marked by the yelps and miaous* <br />Of beasts you have walked on in Animal House. <br /> <br />There’s an Old English bantam that welcomes the dawn, <br />There’s a cat that sings love-songs all night on the lawn, <br />There’s a bachelor turtle-dove making sweet moan <br />And a puppy lamenting because it’s alone; <br />The rowdiest tavern where topers carouse <br />Is a meeting of Quakers to Animal House. <br /> <br />There’s a tortoise asleep in the strawberry bed <br />(They say it’s asleep but it smells a bit dead); <br />There are rabbits — they tell me they pluck them alive — <br />And ferrets in hutches and bees in a hive, <br />And goats, male and female, that merrily browse <br />On the stockings they hang out at Animal House. <br /> <br />There’s a little green parrot like old Uncle Ned <br />Without any feathers on the top of its head, <br />He’s eighty years old and he’s just laid an egg; <br />There’s a toad and a newt and a thrush with one leg, <br />A hedgehog, an owl and a Japanese mouse, <br />But . . . people are nowhere at Animal House.<br /><br />Cicely Fox Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/animal-house-2/
