My Last Terrier

Our surest hope is in an hour destroyed,

And love, best gift of Heaven, not long enjoyed.
Methinks I see her frantic with despair,

1827

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, Superstition! 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 passion 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 grassy 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?

Geist's Grave

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.

1829

And so there rise these lines of verse
On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:

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 grass 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!

Laddie

Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
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.

1831

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

LADDIE

LOWLY the soul that waits

At the white, celestial gates,

A threshold soul to greet

Beloved feet.

Down the streets that are beams of sun

Cherubim children run;

They welcome it from the wall;

Their voices call.

But the Warder saith: "Nay, this

Is the City of Holy Bliss.

What claim canst thou make good
To angelhood?"

"Joy," answereth it from eyes

That are amber ecctasies,

Listening, alert, elate,

Before the gate.

Oh, how the frolic feet
On lonely memory beat!
What rapture in a run
'Twixt snow and sun!

"Nay, brother of the sod,

What part hast thou in God?
What spirit art thou of?"
It answers: "Love,"