W.M. Letts never doubted that his dog was headed for heaven. Here's a celebration in (Irish-dialect tinged) verse of a scrappy dog's soul.
It's wonderful dogs they're breeding now:
Small as a flea or large as a cow;
But my old lad Tim he'll never be bet
By any dog that ever he met.
"Come on," says he, "for I'm not kilt yet."
No matter the size of the dog he'll meet,
Tim trails his coat the length o' the street.
D' ye mind his scars an' his ragged ear,
The like of a Dublin Fusilier?
He's a massacree dog that knows no fear.
Small as a flea or large as a cow;
But my old lad Tim he'll never be bet
By any dog that ever he met.
"Come on," says he, "for I'm not kilt yet."
No matter the size of the dog he'll meet,
Tim trails his coat the length o' the street.
D' ye mind his scars an' his ragged ear,
The like of a Dublin Fusilier?
He's a massacree dog that knows no fear.
But he'd stick to me till his latest breath;
An' he'd go with me to the gates of death.
He'd wait for a thousand years, maybe,
Scratching the door an' whining for me
If myself were inside in Purgatary.
So I laugh when I hear thim make it plain
That dogs and men never meet again.
For all their talk who'd listen to thim,
With the soul in the shining eyes of him?
Would God be wasting a dog like Tim?
An' he'd go with me to the gates of death.
He'd wait for a thousand years, maybe,
Scratching the door an' whining for me
If myself were inside in Purgatary.
So I laugh when I hear thim make it plain
That dogs and men never meet again.
For all their talk who'd listen to thim,
With the soul in the shining eyes of him?
Would God be wasting a dog like Tim?
-- from the delightfully named 1915 collection, To Your Dog and To My Dog (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin), collected by Lincoln Newton Kinnicutt. You'll find this poem on page 39, and the opening essay to the dogs themselves is worth an upcoming post of its own.
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