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.