No words can depict it; all feeble my lays;
Such tender devotion strikes one with amaze.
In a trap which was set to catch mice in my house,
I had the misfortune to capture a mouse;
That mouse was a female, and she was with young;
Yet not hers, but her consort’s, the praise must be sung.
He knowing her state–that she’d soon have a brood,
And would need a warm nest, and must die without food–
Searched all through the house to find stuff for her bed,
And supplied as he could, the food on which she fed.