Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Matthew Arnold 182288Geists Grave
Arnold-MF
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded, Geist! into no more?
Which make me for thy presence yearn,
Call’d us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?
Had they indeed no longer span,
To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?
From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem’d urging the Virgilian cry,
The sense of tears in mortal things—
By spirits gloriously gay,
And temper of heroic mould—
What, was four years their whole short day?
Of all the centuries yet to come,
And not the infinite resource
Of Nature, with her countless sum
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,
And builds himself I know not what
Of second life I know not where.
On us, who stood despondent by,
A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.
Would fix our favorite on the scene,
Nor let thee utterly depart
And be as if thou ne’er hadst been.
On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:
Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!
We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We hear thy scuffle on the stair.
Quick rais’d to ask which way we go;
Crossing the frozen lake, appears
Thy small black figure on the snow!
Who mourn thee in thine English home;
Thou hast thine absent master’s tear,
Dropp’d by the far Australian foam.
And thou shalt live as long as we.
And after that—thou dost not care!
In us was all the world to thee.
Even to a date beyond our own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,
Where oft we watch’d thy couchant form,
To travellers on the Portsmouth road;—
There build we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark’d with a stone, thy last abode!
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
And stop before the stone, and say:
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know
The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.