Animal that I am, I come to call
With soft ancestral stride, and smouldering blood,
And guarded nuances of speech that fall
Deftly within the well-bred bounds they should;
While hooded eyes, across a saucer-rim
Of Haviland, with half-insistent stare,
Or insolent slow droop, control and trim
The wick of innuendo in the air.
Pity my brother ape who cannot chat
With one whose smiles so scintillate and arch—
His belly-lusts, his brutal days, and that
Starved ignorance of opera-hats and starch:
But most—for that he crassly snares his mate
In no such spangled net of love and hate.