To The King's Bulldog by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland — Stanza

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To The King's Bulldog

by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

Dear Brindle, -

Possibly your name is not Brindle,

But that is of no consequence;

The great point, my dear Brindle, being

That when his Majesty Edward VII.

Landed at Flushing the other day

He was accompanied

By

You.

At least so I gather from the halfpenny papers,

And I am free to admit

That when I read the paragraph

Descriptive of your landing at Flushing

My bosom swelled with honest pride.

I am not a doggy man myself,

Dear Brindle,

And no judge of points.

Also,

When I see a dog coming towards me

I invariably

Whisper

"Bite,"

And consequently

My hair

Is apt to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine

At pretty well every canine approach.

Bulldogs especially

Affright me,

So that I can well understand

How the little foreign boy,

Assembled at Flushing

To scoff in his sleeve at the English King,

Remained to flee as it were

At the sight of you.

That, in a nutshell,

Is why my bosom swelled

When I read the paragraph

To which previous reference has been made.

It was a picturesque circumstance, my dear Brindle.

And may be taken

As one more illustration

Of his Majesty's determination

(Pray excuse the rhyme)

To do things as a king of England should.

To have alighted at Flushing

Accompanied by a Lion

Would have been a little outr',

And Unicorns, we know,

Are not obtainable -

What does his Majesty do?

Why he takes, as he always has taken,

The middle and dignified course:

He disjects himself on Flushing

With You by his side.

Next to the Lion and the Unicorn

The Bulldog may be reckoned

The truest

Exemplar and symbol

Of our great nation.

It is like this:

The Bulldog is not too beautiful,

Neither is our great nation;

But he frightens people -

So do we;

He is tenacious

And magnanimous -

Which is just our game;

He fears no foe in shining armour,

Or any other sort of armour -

That is precisely our case;

And he is kept by Lord Charles Beresford,

The Duke of Manchester,

And Mr. G. R. Sims -

Three eminently typical Britons.

In short,

The genius of the British nation,

My dear Brindle,

Is not a policeman

But a Bulldog.