A pome for Brianna, (not my own)

[footfootfoot]

THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
Mr. Hemingway said that he shot only lions that
were utter strangers to him.-The Herald Tribune.

When hot for sport and ripe to kill,
The average novelist shoots at will;
But that, my friends, I’m glad to say,
Is not the case with Hemingway,
Whose sporting life is ever so subtle
Where leopards roam and lions scuttle,
Whose fowling piece doth never bungle
The oldest law of Afric’s jungle,
Who stands his ground in time of danger
But only shoots a total stranger.

What sort of cad, I ask, is he
Who meets a cat one day at tea
And next day, in the play of ire,
Cannot control his rifle fire?
Whose morals are so frightfully weird
He dens a lion in his beard
And shoots, to show that he knows how to,
A jungle beast he used to bow to,
Or massacres, in thoughtless wrath,
The first old pal to cross his oath?

Ah, friends, beware the sportsman fickle
Whose four-foot friends aren't worth a nickel,
Whose ethics of the chase are phony,
Whose dachshunds are so much boloney;
And cling to Ernest Hemingway,
Who writes by night and hunts by day,
Whose books with gore are fairly ruddy
But not with gore of pal or buddy,
And who, in time of darkest danger,
Will only dominate a stranger.
--E B W.