Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/74
"Tell me," I implored. "May I write these matters out for the dwellers of earth to read?"
"You may—if it be your wish," she consented.
"When shall I—" I recommenced, but she shook her head in negation, and I did not finish that query. She smiled and was gone! But I lay awake awhile, staring into the darkness; and as I stared, a vision formed.
I saw a small, barren-looking planet, as yet scarcely cooled, whereon dwarfish, distorted creatures, low in the scale of evolution, yet strangely aspiring; strove ever with a race of giants, malignant, brutish, stolid, stupid.
But what it was they strove for; or what part I was to take in their affairs—I saw not then, nor do I know as yet.
Only, I wait. Wait, that I may once again serve—
And, somehow, I do not think my waiting will be very long!
The hound was cuffed, the hound was kicked,
O' the ears was cropped, o' the tail was nicked,
Oo-hoo-o, howled the hound.
The hound into his kennel crept;
He rarely wept, he never slept.
His mouth he always open kept
Licking his bitter wound,
The hound;
U-lu-lo, howled the hound.
A star upon his kennel shone
That showed the hound a meat-bare bone.
O, hungry was the hound!
The hound had but a churlish wit.
He seized the bone, he crunched, he bit.
"An thou were Master, I had slit
Thy throat with a huge wound!"
Quo' hound.
O, angry was the hound!
The star in castle-window shone,
The master lay abed, alone.
O ho, why not? quo' hound.
He leapt, he seized the throat, he tore
The Master, head from neek, to floor,
And rolled the head i' the kennel door,
And fled and salved his wound,
Good hound!
U-lu-lo, howled the hound.
- ↑ This song of revolution was written by Sidney Lanier for inclusion in a long poem, called "The Jacquerie", which was never completed.