whose associates they are, and the poet who 
looks upon them with a fraternal eye. 
Fie upon the insipid beauty-dog, this absurd 
quadruped, Pomeranian, King Charles, pug or 
lap dog, so pleased with himself that he runs 
indiscreetly between the legs or on the knees 
of a visitor as if he were sure of pleasing, as 
boisterous as a child, as silly as a beldame, 
sometimes as snappish and insolent as a ser-
vant. Shame above all upon those four-footed 
serpents, shivering and idle, that they call Ital-
ian greyhounds, and who do not keep in their 
pointed muzzles enough scent to follow the 
trail of a friend, or in their flattened heads 
enough intelligence to play at dominoes. 
Away to the kennel with all these weari-
some parasites. Let them return to their silken 
and padded kennels. I sing the sorry dog, the 
poor dog, the homeless dog, the wandering 
dog, the mountebank dog, the dog whose in-
stinct, like that of the poor man, the Bohemian 
and the actor, is marvellously sharpened by 
Necessity, that best of mothers, true patron 
saint of intelligence! 
I sing the dogs of calamity, whether it be 
those who wander solitary in the winding ra-
vines of great cities or those who say to the 
hopeless man with blinking, soulful eyes, “Take