Asleep, yet lending half an ear

To travellers on the Portsmouth road ;—
There build we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode !

Then some, who through this 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.

To my Cat

HALF loving-kindliness, and half-disdain,

Thou comest to my call serenely suave, With humming speech and gracious gestures grave,

In salutation courtly and urbane :

Yet must I humble me thy grace to gain

For wiles may win thee, but no arts enslave,
And nowhere gladly thou abidest save

Where naught disturbs the concord of thy reign.

Sphinx of my quiet hearth! who deignst to dwell,

Friend of my toil, companion of mine ease,
Thine is the lore of Ra and Rameses;
That men forget dost thou remember well,
Beholden still in blinking reveries,
With sombre sea-green gaze inscrutable.

To a Cat

Graham R. Tomson.

STA

I

TATELY, kindly, lordly friend,
Condescend

Here to sit by me, and turn

Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read.

All your wondrous wealth of hair,
Dark and fair,

Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness.

Dogs may fawn on all and some
As they come ;

You, a friend of loftier mind,
Answer friends alone in kind.

Just your foot upon my hand
Softly bids it understand.

Morning round this silent sweet
Garden-seat

Sheds its wealth of gathering light,
Thrills the gradual clouds with might,
Changes woodland, orchard, heath,
Lawn and garden there beneath.

Fair and dim they gleamed below:
Now they glow

Deep as even your sun-bright eyes,
Fair as even the wakening skies.
Can it not or can it be

Now that you give thanks to see?

May you not rejoice as I,
Seeing the sky

Change to heaven revealed, and bid
Earth reveal the heaven it hid

All night long from stars and moon, Now the sun sets all in tune?

What within you wakes with day,
Who can say?

All too little may we tell,

Friends who like each other well,

What might haply, if we might

Bid us read our lives aright.

II

Wild on woodland ways your sires

Flashed like fires

;

Fair as flame and fierce as fleet,
As with wings on wingless feet
Shone and sprang your mother, free,
Bright and brave as wind or sea.

Free and proud and glad as they,
Here to-day

Rests or roams their radiant child,
Vanquished not, but reconciled,

Free from curb of aught above
Save the lovely curb of love.

Love through dreams of souls divine
Fain would shine

Round a dawn whose light and song
Then should right our mutual wrong—
Speak, and seal the love-lit law
Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw.

Dreams were theirs; yet haply may

Dawn a day

When such friends and fellows born,
Seeing our earth as fair at morn,

May for wiser love's sake see

More of heaven's deep heart than we.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

THE TABLE AND THE BINN