Ranolf and Amohia - A South-Sea Day-Dream #270096

Ranolf and Amohia.<br><br>Or ring-like tusks upthrusting through<br>The notches of his foaming lips,<br>By constant whetting planed away<br>To chisel-sharpness at their tips:<br>It weakened him - the knife-dig, too,<br>He caught when first commenced the fray;<br>When, as in haste I sprang astride<br>The narrowed gully - just a ditch<br>With flowering koromiko rich -<br>Between my feet the villain drove,<br>And fierce, with short indignant sniffs,<br>And grunts like muttering thunder, strove<br>To gain his haunts beyond the cliffs,<br>And foil the foes he fled from, yet defied.<br><br>"But Nim, my glorious bull-dog! Nim,<br>My mighty hunter of the boar,<br>Who never recked of life or limb<br>That old antagonist before!<br>That rip has finished his career -<br>His last boar-fight is fought; no more<br>He'll come to greet me as of yore,<br>Wriggling his lithe spine till his tail<br>Whipped his black muzzle in the excess<br>Of cringing canine happiness;<br>No more his genuine love express<br>With such dumb signs and tokens clear,<br>Mock bites and mouthings of the hand,<br>Easy as words to understand.<br>Strange, a mere dog should be so dear!<br>But he is dead, and - done with, must we say?<br>Poor victim of this universal demon-play<br>Of Life - my fate to-morrow, his to-day,