The Bath

Hang garlands on the bathroom door;         Let all the passages be spruce;     For, lo, the victim comes once more,         And, ah, he struggles like the deuce!     Bring soaps of many scented sorts;         Let girls in pinafores attend,     With John, their brother, in his shorts,         To wash their dusky little friend.     Their little friend, the dusky dog,         Short-legged and very obstinate,     Faced like a much-offended frog,         And fighting hard against his fate.     No Briton he! From palace-born         Chinese patricians he descends;     He keeps their high ancestral scorn;         His spirit breaks, but never bends.     Our water-ways he fain would'scape;         He hates the customary bath     That thins his tail and spoils his shape,         And turns him to a fur-clad lath;     And, seeing that the Pekinese         Have lustrous eyes that bulge like buds,     He fain would save such eyes as these,         Their owner's pride, from British suds.     Vain are his protests - in he goes.         His young barbarians crowd around;     They soap his paws, they soap his nose;         They soap wherever fur is found.     And soon, still laughing, they extract         His limpness from the darkling tide;     They make the towel's roughness act         On back and head and dripping side.     They shout and rub and rub and shout -         He deprecates their odious glee -     Until at last they turn him out,         A damp gigantic bumble-bee.     Released, he barks and rolls, and speeds         From lawn to lawn, from path to path,     And in one glorious minute needs         More soapsuds and another bath.