THE DEAD DOG.

For the man whose heart and eye Are made wise by charity, Something will appear always That may have his honest praise; There will glimmer points of light In the darkest, saddest night. Thus a crowd once gathered round The dead carcase of an hound; Flung upon the open way, In the market-place it lay; And the idle multitude, Vulture-like, around it stood, One exclaiming, “I declare That he poisons quite the air:” But the next, “He is not worth Pains of putting under earth;” And against the poor dead thing Each in turn his stone must fling: Till one wiser passing by, Just exclaimed, while eagerly They were venting each his spite,— “See his teeth, how pearly white!” Straight the others, with self-blame, Shrunk away in silent shame.

Fair vessel hast thou seen with honey filled, Which is no sooner opened, than descend Upon the clammy sweets by bees distilled A troop of flies, quick swarming without end? II. Yet these when one doth fan away and beat, Such as had lighted with a fearful care On the jar’s edge, nor cumbered wings and feet, Lightly they mount into the upper air. III. But all that headlong plunged those sweets among, No flight is theirs, in cloying sweetness bound; The heavy toils have all around them clung, In woful surfeiting their lives are drowned. IV. Such vessel is this world—fanned evermore By death’s dark Angel with his mighty wing; Then all that had in pleasure’s honied store Their spirits sunk, they upward cannot spring. V. Only they mount who, on this vessel’s side With heed alighting, had with extreme lip Just ventured, there while suffered to abide, Its sweets in measure and with fear to sip.