Placid Pug, and Other Rhymes — Ballad for Bishops

[Illustration: 015] Grieved by decline of infant birth, Have drawn attention to the rabbit.

Not by design these good men work To raise that beast to heights contested, But by comparison, suggested, With those who procreation shirk.

= For if a nation's moral status Be measured by prolific habit, Between man and the meanest rabbit There is an evident hiatus.

= Each year, by lowest computations, Six times the rabbit rears her young, And frequent marriages among The very closest blood relations In very tender years ensure A constant stream of "little strangers," Who, quickly grown to gallant rangers, See that their families endure.

= Not theirs to shirk paternal cares, Moved by considerations sordid, A child can always "be afforded";

The same applies to Belgian hares.

= These noble brutes, pure Duty's pendants, May live to see their blood vermilion Coursing through something like a billion Wholly legitimate descendants.

= Knowledge's path is hard and stony, And some may read who unaware are That rabbit brown and Belgian hare are Both members of the genus Coney.

= The common hare, who lives in fields And never goes into a hole, (In this inferior to the mole) In all things to the Belgian yields.

= He will, immoral brute, decline To multiply domestic "pledges," The family he rears in hedges Is often limited to nine.

= Such shocking want of _savoir faire_, (Surely a symptom of insanity) Might goad a Bishop to profanity