The Poetry of Dogs

Some of Histories Greatest Poets Give Us Fascinating Insights on Man's Best Friend

By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson

Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow, Nigel Planer, Richard Mitchley

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.

1 - The Poetry of Dogs - An Introduction

2 - "A Friendly Welcome" by Lord Byron

3 - "A Popular Personage at Home" by Thomas Hardy

4 - "The Power of the Dog" by Rudyard Kiping

5 - "Verse for a Certain Dog" by Dorothy Parker

6 - "The Best Friend" by Meribah Abbott

7 - "The Joy of a Dog" by Edgar Albert Guest

8 - "Dog" by Harold Munro

9 - "My Comforter" by Anonymous

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

11 - "The Dog and His Master" by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

12 - "Little Lost Pup" by Arthur Guiterman

13 - "A Little Dog That Wags His Tail" by Emily Dickinson

14 - "The Hairy Dog" by Herbert Asquith

15 - "Dogs and Weather" by Winifred Welles

16 - "Incident. Characteristics of a Favourite Dog Which Belonged to a Friend of the Author" by William Wordsworth

17 - "Confessions of a Glutton" by Don Marquis

18 - "The Fable of the Shepherd and Wolf" by John Gay

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

20 - "Beau's Reply" by William Cowper

21 - "Contentment" by Burges Johnson wav

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

23 - "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" by Eugene Field

24 - "How the Feud Started" by Arthur Guiterman

25 - "Tray" by Robert Browning

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

27 - "The Irish Greyhound" by Katherine Phillips

28 - "The Fable of the Mastiff" by John Gay

29 - The Dog in the Manger" by Aphra Behn

30 - "Towser, a True Tale" 20th July 1806 by Robert Tannahill

31 - "The Dog of St Bernard's" by Caroline Fry Wilson

32 - "Sonnet - to Tartar, a Terrier Beauty" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

33 - "Tobias's Dog" by Mary Howitt

34 - "I Started Early – Took my Dog" by Emily Dickinson

35 - "Canis Major" by Robert Frost

36 - "Man and Dog" by Edward Thomas

37 - "Dog Days" by Amy Lowell

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

39 - "The Dogs" by Arthur Symons

40 - "To a Black Greyhound" by Julian Grenfell

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

42 - "The Dog Tupman" by Stella Benson

43 - "Upon His Spaniel Tracy" by Robert Herrick

44 - "To Rollo" by Kenneth Grahame

45 - "Ruby" by Edward Lear

46 - "To Flush, My Dog" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

47 - "Kaiser Dead" by Matthew Arnold

48 - "Epitaph to a Dog" by Lord Byron

49 - "Last Words to a Dumb Friend" by Thomas Hardy

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