Hello!
I love the fact that at the end of this poem an innocent beauty like the dog can lead the owner into rectitude as suggested by the ability to 'pray'. It's a very common poetic concept of course, from Dante to Coleridge, in which the former might treat Bicè as such, and the latter might do so with any living form of nature, or the sea after a certain doctor told him to avoid such benign beauty.
Benign beauty! That is the theme of this poem, in my opinion, and how such, in the form of a loyal and gracious pet, can lead man to the bettering of themselves.
This benign beauty, in the form of a dog, also liberates the narrator from their 'corpus - cell' which is represented by his job as a teacher with the student themes still on the desk, and this subtle indication inculcated in the poem with great expertise is another greatly shown poetic concept. That of the 'Mutatio Animi,' the same concept which allowed Petrarch to steer his thoughts away from everything in his mortal life whilst guided by that Benign Beauty of Laura.
It's a simple poem, with a simple theme, but underneath its verses lay these two concepts that have been displayed in the garbs of a contemporary and, again, simple (light hearted poem).
I like it very much as a whole, but for these two reasons.
Cheers.
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