Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913.

XXX. A Portrait

I AM a kind of farthing dip,

Unfriendly to the nose and eyes;

A blue-behinded ape, I skip

Upon the trees of Paradise.

At mankind’s feast, I take my place

In solemn, sanctimonious state,

And have the air of saying grace

While I defile the dinner plate.

I am the “smiler with the knife,”

The battener upon garbage, I—

Dear Heaven, with such a rancid life,

Were it not better far to die?

Yet still, about the human pale,

I love to scamper, love to race,

To swing by my irreverent tail

All over the most holy place;

And when at length, some golden day,

The unfailing sportsman, aiming at,

Shall bag, me—all the world shall say:

Thank God, and there’s an end of that!