Classic Poem

You may sing of your dog, your bottom dog,
Or of any dog that you please, —
I go for the dog, the wise old dog,
That knowingly takes his ease,
And, wagging his tail outside the ring,
Keeping always his bone in sight,
Cares not a pin in his wise old head
For either dog in the fight.

Not his is the bone they are fighting for,
And why should my dog sail in,
With nothing to gain but a certain chance
To lose his own precious skin?
There may be a few, perhaps, who fail
To see it in quite this light,
But when the fur flies I had rather be
The outside dog in the fight.