The Home Book of Verse Volume Iv Part 23

Unhappy Shock! Yet more unhappy fair, Doomed to survive thy joy and only care.

Thy wretched fingers now no more shall deck, And tie the favorite ribbon round his neck; No more thy hand shall smooth his glossy hair, And comb the wavings of his pendent ear.

Let cease thy flowing grief, forsaken maid!

All mortal pleasures in a moment fade: Our surest hope is in an hour destroyed, And love, best gift of Heaven, not long enjoyed.

Methinks I see her frantic with despair, Her streaming eyes, wrung hands, and flowing hair; Her Mechlin pinners, rent, the floor bestrow, And her torn fan gives real signs of woe.

Hence, Superst.i.tion! that tormenting guest, That haunts with fancied fears the coward breast; No dread events upon this fate attend, Stream eyes no more, no more thy tresses rend.

Though certain omens oft forewarn a state, And dying lions show the monarch's fate, Why should such fears bid Celia's sorrow rise?

For, when a lap-dog falls, no lover dies.

Cease, Celia, cease; restrain thy flowing tears.

Some warmer pa.s.sion will dispel thy cares.

In man you'll find a more substantial bliss, More grateful toying and a sweeter kiss.

He's dead. Oh! lay him gently in the ground!

And may his tomb be by this verse renowned: Here Shock, the pride of all his kind, is laid, Who fawned like man, but ne'er like man betrayed.

John Gay [1685-1732]

MY LAST TERRIER

I mourn "Patroclus," whilst I praise Young "Peter" sleek before the fire, A proper dog, whose decent ways Renew the virtues of his sire; "Patroclus" rests in gra.s.sy tomb, And "Peter" grows into his room.

For though, when Time or Fates consign The terrier to his latest earth, Vowing no wastrel of the line Shall dim the memory of his worth, I meditate the silkier breeds, Yet still an Amurath succeeds:

Succeeds to bind the heart again To watchful eye and strenuous paw, To tail that gratulates amain Or deprecates offended Law; To bind, and break, when failing eye And palsied paw must say good-bye.

Ah, had the dog's appointed day But tallied with his master's span, Nor one swift decade turned to gray The busy muzzle's black and tan, To reprobate in idle men Their threescore empty years and ten!

Sure, somewhere o'er the Stygian strait "Panurge" and "Bito," "Tramp" and "Mike,"

In couchant conclave watch the gate, Till comes the last successive tyke, Acknowledged with the countersign: "Your master was a friend of mine."

In dreams I see them spring to greet, With rapture more than tail can tell, Their master of the silent feet Who whistles o'er the asphodel, And through the dim Elysian bounds Leads all his cry of little hounds.

John Halsham [18--

GEIST'S GRAVE

Four years!--and didst thou stay above The ground, which hides thee now, but four?

And all that life, and all that love, Were crowded, Geist! into no more?

Only four years those winning ways, Which make me for thy presence yearn, Called us to pet thee or to praise, Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul, Had they indeed no longer span, To run their course, and reach their goal And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye, From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs Seemed surging the Virgilian cry, The sense of tears in mortal things--

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled By spirits gloriously gay, And temper of heroic mould-- What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four!--and not the course Of all the centuries yet to come, And not the infinite resource Of Nature, with her countless sum

Of figures, with her fulness vast Of new creation evermore, Can ever quite repeat the past, Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what Of second life I know not where.

But thou, when struck thine hour to go, On us, who stood despondent by, A meek last glance of love didst throw, And humbly lay thee down to die.

Yet would we keep thee in our heart-- Would fix our favorite on the scene, Nor let thee utterly depart And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.

And so there rise these lines of verse On lips that rarely form them now; While to each other we rehea.r.s.e: Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!

We stroke thy broad brown paws again, We bid thee to thy vacant chair, We greet thee by the window-pane, We hear thy scuffle on the stair;

We see the flaps of thy large ears Quick raised to ask which way we go; Crossing the frozen lake, appears Thy small black figure on the snow!

Nor to us only art thou dear, Who mourn thee in thine English home; Thou hast thine absent master's tear, Dropped by the far Australian foam.

Thy memory lasts both here and there, And thou shalt live as long as we.

And after that--thou dost not care!

In us was all the world to thee.

Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame, Even to a date beyond our own, We strive to carry down thy name By mounded turf and graven stone.

We lay thee, close within our reach, Here, where the gra.s.s is smooth and warm, Between the holly and the beech, Where oft we watched thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear To travelers on the Portsmouth road;-- There choose we thee, O guardian dear, Marked with a stone, thy last abode!

Then some, who through this garden pa.s.s, When we too, like thyself, are clay, Shall see thy grave upon the gra.s.s, And stop before the stone, and say:

People who lived here long ago Did by this stone, it seems, intend To name for future times to know The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

"HOLD"

I know, where Hamps.h.i.+re fronts the Wight, A little church, where "after strife"

Reposes Guy de Blanquely, Knight, By Alison his wife: I know their features' graven lines In time-stained marble monotone, While crouched before their feet reclines Their little dog of stone!

I look where Blanquely Castle still Frowns o'er the oak wood's summer state, (The maker of a patent pill Has purchased it of late), And then through Fancy's open door I backward turn to days of old, And see Sir Guy--a bachelor Who owns a dog called "Hold"!

I see him take the tourney's chance, And urge his coal-black charger on To an arbitrament by lance For lovely Alison; I mark the onset, see him hurl From broidered saddle to the dirt His rival, that ign.o.ble Earl-- Black-hearted Ma.s.singbert!

Then Alison, with down-dropped eyes, Where happy tears bedim the blue, Bestows a valuable prize And adds her hand thereto; My lord, his surcoat streaked with sand, Remounts, low muttering curses hot, And with a base-born, hireling band He plans a dastard plot!