The Doorless Wolf

I saw, one day, when times were very good,A newly rich man walking in a wood,Who chanced to meet, all hungry, lean, and sore,The wolf that used to sit outside his door.Forlorn he was, and piteous his plaint.“Help me!” he howled. “With hunger I am faint.It is so long since I have seen a door--And you are rich, and you have many score.When you’d but one, I sat by it all day;Now you have many, I am turned away.Help me, good sir, once more to find a place.Prosperity now stares me in the face.”The newly rich man, jingling all the whileThe silver in his pocket, smiled a smile:He saw a way the wolf could be of use.

“Good wolf,” said he, “you’re going to the deuce,--The dogs, I mean,--and that will never do;I think I’ve found a way to see you through.I too have worries. Ever since I metProsperity I have been sore besetBy begging letters, charities, and cranks,All very short in gold and long in thanks.Now, if you’ll come and sit by my front doorFrom eight o’clock each morning, say, till four,Then every one will think that I am poor,And from their pesterings I’ll be secure.Do you accept?” The wolf exclaimed, “I do!”The rich man smiled; the wolf smiled; I smiled, too,And in my little book made haste to scrawl:“Thus affluence makes niggards of us all!”

One day a Poppy, just in play,Said to a butterfly, “Go ’way,Go ’way, you naughty thing! Oh, my!But you’re a bold bad butterfly!”

Of course ’t was only said in fun,He was a perfect paragon--In every way a spotless thing(Save for two spots upon his wing).

But tho’ his morals were the best,He could not understand a jest;And somehow what the Poppy saidPut ideas in his little head,And soon he really came to wishHe were the least bit “devilish.”

He then affected manners roughAnd strained his voice to make it gruff,And scowled as who should say “Beware,I am a dangerous character.You’d best not fool with me, for I--I am a bold, bad butterfly.”

He hung around the wildest flowers,And kept the most unseemly hours,With dragonflies and drunken bees,And learned to say “By Jove!” with easeUntil his pious friends, aghast,Exclaimed, “He’s getting awf’lly fast!”

He shunned the nicer flowers, and threwOut hints of shady things he knewAbout the laurels, and one dayHe even went so far to saySomething about the lilies sweetI could not possibly repeat!

At length, it seems, from being toldHow bad he was, he grew so bold,This most obnoxious butterfly,That one day, swaggering ’round the sky,He swaggered in the net of Mist-er Jones, the entomologist.

“It seems a sin,” said Mr. J.,“This harmless little thing to slay,”As, taking it from out his net,He pinned it to a board, and setUpon a card below the same,In letters large, its Latin name,Which is--

but I omit it, lestIts family might be distressed,And stop the little sum per yearThey pay me not to print it here.