I.

"Glorious! this life of lake
And hill-top! toil and tug through tangled brake,
Dense fern, and smothering broom;
And then such rests as now I take,
In sunflecked soft cathedral-gloom
Of forests immemorial; Noble sport
Boar-hunting! yet that furious charge, the last
Of the dead monster there had cut it short
For me, and once for all, belike.
Had not his headlong force impaled
The savage on my tough wood-pike
That, propped with planted knee and foot,
Its butt against a rata-root,
From chest to chine right through him passed;
And nought his inch-thick hide availed.
page 2 Or ring-like tusks up thrusting through
The notches of his foaming lips,
By constant whetting planed away
To chisel-sharpness at their tips:
It weakened him—-the knife-dig, too,
He caught when first commenced the fray;
When, as in haste I sprang astride
The narrowed gully—just a ditch
With flowering koromiko rich—
Between my feet the villain drove,
And fierce, with short indignant sniffs,
And grunts like muttering thunder, strove
To gain his haunts beyond the cliffs,
And foil the foes he fled from, yet defied.

"But Nim, my glorious bull-dog! Nim,
My mighty hunter of the boar,
Who never recked of Life or limb
That old antagonist before!
That rip has finished his career—
His last boar-fight is fought; no more
He'll come to greet me as of yore,
Wriggling his lithe spine till his tail
Whipped his black muzzle in the excess
Of cringing canine happiness;
No more his genuine love express
With such dumb signs and tokens clear,
Mock bites and mouthings of the hand,
Easy as words to understand.
Strange, a mere dog should be so dear!
But he is dead, and—done with, must we say?
Poor victim of this universal demon-play
Of Life—my fate to-morrow, his to-day,

page 3

Which I, for sport, have sealed—as God (or no God, then Say you?) that of his myriad worlds and men?
And 'pluck' like his, that nought could quail;
Good temper-—honest, humble love and truth—
These must not live again, for sooth!
No future for the Dog—but why?
Duty, our highest inborn feeling, who
Has stronger than this guardian true
To death? or can we in our own rejoice,
As sprung from self-determined choice?
That Self with so much bias made—
Our will by strongest motive swayed?
Scarce higher than his, our claims, I fear,
To merit of our own appear.
Then compound, too, not simple, he,
A work complete no more than we,
(If stuff for hope therein may be),
Has not his nature, like our own,
Instincts at war, the lower with the high?
With trusts to be fulfilled, obedience shown—
The longing for the ramble, game forbidden,
Or bone, like miser's treasure, hidden?
And if, instead of eyes that often so
With solemn melancholy glow,
He had but tongue to speak with, who can show
He might not tell of hopes, and dim
Perceptions, yearnings, that no longer dumb,
He, too, may rise to human, and become
Erect some day, a ruler and a lord,
And, like his master, loved, adored,
A visible God and Providence to him—
Though swayed, no doubt, full oft, by rage, caprice and whim,

page 4

Poor wretch! we read his fallings at a glance;
All that in this life hinders his advance.
Ungifted to abstract, he can conceive
No clear ideal to aim at or achieve;
Ungifted to reflect—himself discern,
His depth beneath the ideal could never team;
Had he both gifts, would want constructive brain.
To plan the way the high ideal to gain—
Want hands to work with, had he found the way,
So in his low estate perforce must stay

"But are our organs that compare-—combine:—
Dispart and spin deductions fine,
Creations so exclusively divine,
They needs must be preserved compact,
By no harsh doom destroyed, dissolved?
When {though we match the Dog in eyes)
The precious, last, profoundest prize
They palm upon us for a fact,
In spite of all those starlit skies.
Is in our petty selves to see
And what from us (by what decree?)
Is still evolving and evolved,
The highest Being that can be?—
But truce to that preposterous claim—
I take it and stand by the same,
There is no God muck worth the name,
Whate'er their scale, where'er their seat,
Would drop creations, incomplete;
Let any force his plans defeat;
The wants he caused, leave unsupplied,
Desires he gave unsatisfied!

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Better believe all creatures—foul or fair.
One universal endless progress share;
In the procession headed by mankind.
Only a march or two behind;
Each rank of God's grand army onward bent
To higher states and stages—who knows where?—
Of free and fortunate development'"