INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF A NEWFOUNDLAND DOG. WHEN Some proud son of man returns to earth, Not what he was, but what he should have been: Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth : Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, By nature vile, ennobled but by name, Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. Newstead Abbey, Oct. 30, 1808. STANZAS. « Heu quantò minùs est cum reliquis versari quàm tut meminisse ! » 1. AND thou art dead, as young and fair And form so soft, and charms so rare. Though earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook 2. I will not ask where thou liest low, Nor gaze upon the spot ; There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not : It is enough for me to prove That what I loved and long must love, Like common earth can rot; To me there needs no stone to tell, 3. Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow : And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. 4. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; That all those charms have passed away; 5. The flower in ripened bloom unmatched Though by no hand untimely snatched, And yet it were a greater grief Since earthly eye but ill can bear 6. I know not if I could have borne To see thy beauties fade; The night that followed such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath past, As stars that shoot along the sky 7. As once I wept, if I could weep, To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, And show that love, however vain, 8. Yet how much less it were to gain, The all of thine that cannot die Through dark and dread Eternity, Returns again to me, And more thy buried love endears TO I. BRIGHT be the place of thy soul! 2. Light be the turf of thy tomb! May its verdure like emeralds be For why should we mourn for the blest? |