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Title: Tribute to the Memory of the same Dog
Author: William Wordsworth [
More Titles by Wordsworth]
Lie here sequester'd:--be this little mound
For ever thine, and be it holy ground!
Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath the covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;
More thou deserv'st; 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 pray'd for thee, and that thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last:
For thou hadst liv'd, till every thing that chears
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,--
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 boons vouchsafed to thee,
Found scarcely any where 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 END-
William Wordsworth's poem: Tribute to the Memory of the same Dog
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