<h3> <SPAN name="rat"></SPAN> The Rat<br/> </h3>
<p>As often as he let himself be seen<br/>
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored<br/>
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord<br/>
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean —<br/>
Who made him human when he might have been<br/>
A rat, and so been wholly in accord<br/>
With any other creature we abhorred<br/>
As always useless and not always clean.<br/></p>
<p>Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,<br/>
And in a final hole not ready then;<br/>
For now he is among those over there<br/>
Who are not coming back to us again.<br/>
And we who do the fiction of our share<br/>
Say less of rats and rather more of men.<br/></p>
<p><br/><br/><br/></p>
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