And thou, O Abbey gray!

Predestined to the ray

By this dear guest over thy precinct shed

Fear not but that thy light once more shall burn,
Once more thine immemorial gleam return,

Though sunk be now this bright, this gracious head!
Let but the light appear

And thy transfigured walls be touch'd with flame-
Our Arthur will again be present here,
Again from lip to lip will pass his name.

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,
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,
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 surging the Virgilian cry,1
The sense of tears in mortal things —

1 Sunt lacrima rerum!

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.

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,
Dropt by the far Australian foam.

Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shalt live as long as we.

- thou dost not care!

And after that
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 watch'd thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear

To travellers on the Portsmouth road ;-
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,
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 MATTHIAS.

POOR MATTHIAS! - Found him lying Fall'n beneath his perch and dying? Found him stiff, you say, though warm All convulsed his little form?

Poor canary! many a year

Well he knew his mistress dear;
Now in vain you call his name,
Vainly raise his rigid frame,
Vainly warm him in your breast,
Vainly kiss his golden crest,
Smooth his ruffled plumage fine,
Touch his trembling beak with wine.
One more gasp · it is the end!

Dead and mute our tiny friend !
Songster thou of many a year,
Now thy mistress brings thee here,
Says, it fits that I rehearse,
Tribute due to thee, a verse,
Meed for daily song of yore

Silent now for evermore.

Poor Matthias!

Wouldst thou have

More than pity? claim'st a stave?

Friends more near us than a bird

We dismiss'd without a word.
Rover, with the good brown head,
Great Atossa, they are dead;
Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme
Tells the praises of their prime.
Thou didst know them old and gray,
Know them in their sad decay.

Thou hast seen Atossa sage

Sit for hours beside thy cage;

Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,
Flutter, chirp she never stirr'd!

What were now these toys to her?
Down she sank amid her fur;
Eyed thee with a soul resign'd —
And thou deemedst cats were kind!
-Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.

Less than they to us are you !

Nearer human were their powers,

Closer knit their life with ours.

Hands had stroked them, which are cold, Now for years, in churchyard mould; Comrades of our past were they,

Of that unreturning day.

Changed and aging, they and we
Dwelt, it seem'd, in sympathy.
Alway from their presence broke