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BYRON.

INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF A DOG.

WHEN Some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of wo,
And storied urns record who rests below;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been:
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his master's own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth:
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh, man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debas'd by slavery, or corrupt by power,

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on,-it honours none you wish to mourn :
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one,-and here he lies.

THE DREAM.

OUR life is twofold: sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence; sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,

And dreams in their developement have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy:
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become

A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity:

They pass like spirits of the past,—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power-
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,-
The dread of vanish'd shadows. Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind? The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been,—and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep,-for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity,-the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,

Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, in the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd,—
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing; the one, on all that was beneath-
Fair as herself-bu, the boy gazed on her:
And both were young, and one was beautiful;
And both were young, yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;-
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years; and, to his eye,
There was but one beloved face on earth-
And that was shining on him: he had look'd
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice;-he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words: she was his sight,
For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers,
Which colour'd all his objects;—he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,-
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all! upon a tone,

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously;—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.

But she in these fond feelings had no share: Her sighs were not for him! to her he was Even as a brother,—but no more: 'twas much,

For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him;
Herself the solitary scion left

Of a time-honour'd race. It was a name

Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not,—and why? Time taught him a deep answer-when she loved

Another! even now she loved another;

And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparison'd:
Within an antique oratory stood

The boy of whom I spake;-he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon

He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd
His bow'd head on his hands and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion,-then arose again,
And, with his teeth and quivering hands, did tear
What he had written; but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused

The lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then,—and yet
She knew she was by him beloved! she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow; and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and, with a cold and gentle grasp,
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts

Was traced, and then it faded as it came:

He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu;
For they did part with mutual smiles: he pass'd
From out the massy gate of that old hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way,
And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more!

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt With strange and dusky aspects; he was not Himself like what he had been: on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer! There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me; but he was A part of all, and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names Of those who rear'd them: by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fasten'd near a fountain; and a man, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumber'd around; And they were canopied by the blue sky— So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The lady of his love was wed with one
Who did not love her better: in her home,

A thousand leagues from his,—her native home,

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