Better fate have Prince and Swallow --
See them cleaving to the sport!
Music has no heart to follow-
Little Music, she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor heart,
Hers is now another part :
A loving creature she and brave!
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.
From the brink her paws she stretches,
Very hands as you would say !
And afflicting moans she fetches,
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears,
Him alone she sees and hears,
Makes efforts and complainings; nor gives o'er Until her fellow sank, and reappeared no more.
TO THE MEMORY OF THE SAME DOG.
LIE here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no stone we raise :
More thou deservest; but this man gives to man,,
Brother to brother, this is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year :
This oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
I grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last :
For thou hadst lived, till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away;
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,—
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath,
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed :
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead;
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were-
Old household thoughts in which thou hadst thy share,
But for some precious boon vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree !
For love, that comes to all-the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense:
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy, which did thee bind
Not only to us men, but to thy kind :
Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw
The soul of love, love's intellectual law :
Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame ;
Our tears from passion and from reason came,
And, therefore, shalt thou be an honoured name !
THE FORCE OF PRAYER; OR, THE FOUND
ING OF BOLTON PRIORY.
"What is good for a bootless bene?"
With these dark words begins my tale;
And their meaning is, "Whence can comfort spring,
When prayer is of no avail ?
"What is good for a bootless bene? The falconer to the lady said;
And she made answer, "Endless sorrow!"
For she knew that her son was dead.
She knew it by the falconer's words,
And from the look of the falconer's eye;
And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.
-Young Romilly through Barden Woods
Is ranging high and low;
And holds a greyhound in a leash,
To let slip upon buck or doe.
And the pair have reached that fearful chasm,
How tempting to bestride!
For lordly Wharf is there pent in
With rocks on either side.
This striding-place is called "The Strid,"
A name which it took of yore:
A thousand years hath it borne that name,
And shall a thousand more.
And hither is young Romilly come,
And what may now forbid
That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,
Shall bound across "The Strid"?
He sprang in glee,—for what cared he
That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep?
But the greyhound in the leash hung back,
And checked him in his leap.
The boy is in the arms of Wharf,
And strangled by a merciless force;
For never more was young Romilly seen
Till he rose a lifeless corse.
Now there is stillness in the vale,
And deep unspeaking sorrow :
Wharf shall be to pitying hearts,
A name more sad than Yarrow.
If for a lover the lady wept,
A solace she might borrow
From death, and from the passion of death,
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.
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