The Poetry of Dogs

By Thomas Hardy, Dorothy Parker and William Cowper

Man’s best friend. An always faithful ally.

Whether the dog is domesticated as a pet and there to enjoy life with a family or as a work-dog herding sheep, helping to hunt, police or guard, the dog has proved time and time again to have many invaluable uses.

They come in all shapes and sizes from sought after breeds to lowly mongrels each with an array of qualities that give them distinct personalities.

From earliest times dogs have been able to find a unique place fulfilling the needs of their keepers and often there is equal devotion from master to servant. A dog’s life no longer has to have negative connotations as so many pooches are loved, extravagantly fed, groomed, petted and pawed over, all perhaps more than our fellow man.

Dogs were even worshipped as deities in Mesopotamian times and across several cultures and civilisations including Hindu, Chinese and Greek, they are the helpers, the watchers or guardians of sacred or sensitive sites.

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470732

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a poet and novelist from the United Kingdom. His best-known works include Far from the Maddening Crowd (1874), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).

Book preview

The Poetry of Dogs

Man’s best friend. An always faithful ally.

Whether the dog is domesticated as a pet and there to enjoy life with a family or as a work-dog herding sheep, helping to hunt, police or guard, the dog has proved time and time again to have many invaluable uses. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from sought after breeds to lowly mongrels each with an array of qualities that give them distinct personalities. 

From earliest times dogs have been able to find a unique place fulfilling the needs of their keepers and often there is equal devotion from master to servant.  A dog’s life no longer has to have negative connotations as so many pooches are loved, extravagantly fed, groomed, petted and pawed over, all perhaps more than our fellow man. 

Dogs were even worshipped as deities in Mesopotamian times and across several cultures and civilisations including Hindu, Chinese and Greek, they are the helpers, the watchers or guardians of sacred or sensitive sites.

Between then and now poets have written verse, both serious and humorous, in attempts to keep a poetic track both of feelings and as a tribute to our four-legged friends and their adventures.

Index of Contents

A Friendly Welcome by Lord Byron

A Popular Personage At Home by Thomas Hardy

The Power of the Dog by Rudyard Kipling

Verse for a Certain Dog by Dorothy Parker

The Best Friend by Meribah Abbott

The Joy of a Dog by Edgar Albert Guest

Dog by Harold Munro

My Comforter by Anonymous

Four Feet. 'The Woman in His Life' by Rudyard Kipling

The Dog and His Master by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

Little Lost Pup by Arthur Guiterman

A Little Dog That Wags His Tail by Emily Dickinson

The Hairy Dog by Herbert Asquith

Dogs and Weather by Winifred Welles

Incident. Characteristic of a Favourite Dog Which Belonged to a Friend of the Author by William Wordsworth

Confessions of a Glutton by Don Marquis

The Fable of the Shepherd and Wolf by John Gay

On a Spaniel Called 'Beau', Killing a Young Bird by William Cowper

Beau's Reply by William Cowper

Contentment by Burges Johnson wav

The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog by Anonymous

The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat by Eugene Field

How the Feud Started by Arthur Guiterman

Tray by Robert Browning

The Dog and the Water Lily. No Fable by William Cowper

The Irish Greyhound by Katherine Phillips

The Fable of the Mastiff by John Gay

The Dog in the Manger by Aphra Behn

Towser, A True Tale, 20th July 1806 by Robert Tannahill

The Dog of St Bernard's by Caroline Fry Wilson

Sonnet - To Tartar, A Terrier Beauty by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Tobias's Dog by Mary Howitt

I Started Early—Took my Dog by Emily Dickinson

Canis Major by Robert Frost

Man and Dog by Edward Thomas

Dog Days by Amy Lowell

So This Is How I Turned into a Dog by Vladamir Mayakovsky

The Dogs by Arthur Symons

To a Black Greyhound by Julian Grenfell

An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog by Oliver Goldsmith

The Dog Tupman by Stella Benson

Upon His Spaniel Tracy by Robert Herrick

To Rollo by Kenneth Grahame

Ruby by Edward Lear

To Flush, My Dog by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Kaiser Dead by Matthew Arnold

Epitaph