The Rat
14 lines✦
s often as he let himself be seenWe pitied him, or scorned him, or deploredThe inscrutable profusion of the LordWho shaped as one of us a thing so mean --Who made him human when he might have beenA rat, and so been wholly in accordWith any other creature we abhorredAs always useless and not always clean. Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,And in a final hole not ready then;For now he is among those over thereWho are not coming back to us again.And we who do the fiction of our shareSay less of rats and rather more of men.
✦