christina rossetti on our fellow creatures

You may have run into this tender poem before, but I had not.  The poet Christina Rossetti (English; 1830-94) is known for such poems as "Goblin Market," and her work may seem innocent on the surface, but is full-hearted and passionate if you keep reading her.

A Poor Old Dog

Pity the sorrows of a poor old dog
Who wags his tail a-begging in his need;
Despise not even the sorrows of a frog,
God's creature too, and that's enough to plead;
Spare puss who trusts us dozing on our hearth;
Spare bunny, once so frisky and so free; 

Spare all the harmless creatures of the earth:
Spare, and be spared — or who shall plead for thee?

- circa 1879.  This is from a book of her poems, New Poems by Christina Rossetti, collected and published after her death by her brother William Michael Rossetti; her other brother was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite artist.