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_.
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.
The monument erected at Edinburgh to the memory of "Grey Friars' Bobby" by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts 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, Unhonored falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth.