| |
| 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, | 5 |
| Which make me for thy presence yearn, | |
| Call’d 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, | 10 |
| To run their course, and reach their goal, | |
| And read their homily to man? | |
| |
| That liquid, melancholy eye, | |
| From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs | |
| Seem’d urging the Virgilian cry, 1 | 15 |
| The sense of tears in mortal things— | |
| |
| That steadfast, mournful strain, consol’d | |
| By spirits gloriously gay, | |
| And temper of heroic mould— | |
| What, was four years their whole short day? | 20 |
| |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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 rais’d to ask which way we go; | 50 |
| 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, | 55 |
| Dropp’d 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. | 60 |
| |
| 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, | 65 |
| Here, where the grass is smooth and warm, | |
| Between the holly and the beech, | |
| Where oft we watch’d thy couchant form, | |
| |
| Asleep, yet lending half an ear | |
| To travellers on the Portsmouth road;— | 70 |
| There build we thee, O guardian dear, | |
| Mark’d with a stone, thy last abode! | |
| |
| Then some, who through this garden pass, | |
| When we too, like thyself, are clay, | |
| Shall see thy grave upon the grass, | 75 |
| 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. | 80 |
