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.1
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 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.

1 Sunt lacrimæ rerum.

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 rehearse :
Such ways, such arts, such looks hast 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 e 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,
Dropt 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 thine 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 travellers on the Portsmouth road ·
There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
Marked with a stone, thy last abode !

Then some, who through the 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.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVORITE OLD SPANIEL.

Poor old friend, how earnestly

Would I have pleaded for thee! thou hadst been
Still the companion of my boyish sports;

And as I roamed o'er Avon's woody cliffs,

From many a day-dream has thy short, quick bark
Recalled my wandering soul. I have beguiled

Often the melancholy hours at school,

Soured by some little tyrant, with the thought
Of distant home, and I remembered then
Thy faithful fondness; for not mean the joy,
Returning at the happy holidays,

I felt from thy dumb welcome. Pensively
Sometimes have I remarked thy slow decay,
Feeling myself changed too, and musing much
On many a sad vicissitude of life.

Ah, poor companion! when thou followedst last
Thy master's parting footsteps to the gate
Which closed forever on him, thou didst lose
Thy truest friend, and none was left to plead
For the old age of brute fidelity.

But fare thee well! Mine is no narrow creed;
And He who gave thee being did not frame
The mystery of life to be the sport

Of merciless man. There is another world
For all that live and move -a better one!

Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine
Infinite Goodness to the little bounds

Of their own charity, may envy thee.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

EPITAPH IN GREY FRIARS' CHURCHYARD. The monument erected at Edinburgh to the memory of "Grey Friars' Bobby" by the Baroness BurdettCoutts has a Greek inscription by Professor Blackie. The translation is as follows:

This monument

was erected by a noble lady, THE BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS, to the memory of

GREY FRIARS' BOBBY,

a faithful and affectionate
LITTLE DOG,

who followed the remains of his beloved master
to the churchyard,

in the year 1858,

and became a constant visitor to the grave,
refusing to be separated from the spot
until he died

in the year 1872.

FROM AN INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF A

NEWFOUNDLAND DOG.

When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been:
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master's own,

Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,