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.
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 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,