Fit dying consolation to a deer that may not live.
“The dappled brute lay on the grass, a knife was in its side;
Another from its yearning throat let forth its vital tide.
It said, as tho’ escaping from the worst that could befall,
‘Now, thank my stars, I shall not smoke on board at Charlecote Hall!’
“Oh, happy deer! Above your friends exalted high by fate,
You’re not condemned like all the herds to Lucy’s glutton plate;
But every morsel of your flesh, from shoulder to the haunch,
Tho’ bred and killed in Charlecote Park, hath lined an honest paunch.”
[1]. “In the country a scarecrow, in London an ass!”—Shakespeare’s Satire on Sir Thomas Lucy.