Indiana Collie Club

"A swirl of gold-and-white and gray and black,

 Rackety, vibrant, glad with life's hot zest,

 Sunnybank collies, gaily surging pack,

 These are my chums; the chums that love me best.

 Not chums alone, but courtiers, zealots, too, ---

 Clean-white of soul, too wise for fraud or sham

 Yet senseless in their worship ever new

 These are the friendly folk whose god I am.

 A blatant, foolish, stumbling, purblind god, --

 A pinchbeck idol, clogged with feet of clay

 Yet, eager at my lightest word or nod

 They crave but leave to follow and obey.

 We humans are so slow to understand

 Swift in our wrath, deaf to the justice-plea

 Meting out punishment with lavish hand

 What, but a dog, would serve such gods as we?

 Heaven gave them souls, I'm sure; but dulled the brain

 Lest they should sadden at so brief a span

 Of heedless, honest life as they sustain;

Or doubt the godhead of their master, Man.

Today a pup; tomorrow at life’s prime

Then old and fraile; -- dead at fourteen years

At best a meagre little inch of time

Oblivion then, sans mourners, memories, tears

Service that asks no price; forgiveness free

For injury or for injustice hard.

Stanch friendship, wanting neither thanks nor fee

Save privilege to worship and to guard:---

That is their creed.  They know no shrewder way

To travel through their hour of lifetime here.

Would Man but deign to serve his God as they,

Millennium must dawn within the year."

--Albert Payson Terhune

 from "Buff: A Collie"