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,

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_.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

[1] Sunt lacrimae rerum.

* * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVORITE OLD SPANIEL.

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.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

* * * * *

EPITAPH IN GREY FRIARS' CHURCHYARD.

The monument erected at Edinburgh to the memory of "Grey Friars' Bobby" by
the Baroness Burdett-Coutts has a Gree