Llewelyn’s sorrow proved.
And there he hung his horn and spear,
And there, as evening fell,
In fancy’s ear he oft would hear
Poor Gellert’s dying yell.
And till great Snowdon’s rocks grow old,
And cease the storm to brave,
The consecrated spot shall hold
The name of “Gellert’s Grave.”
Dr. John Brown’s exquisite prose poem of Rab and his Friends is as lasting a memorial to that dog as any built of granite or marble. The dog is emphatically the central figure, the hero of the story. The author sat for his picture with Rab by his side, and we are told that his interest in a half-blind and aged pet was evinced in the very last hours of his life. The dog has figured as the real attraction in several novels, and Ouida lets Puck tell his own story. Mrs. Stowe devoted one volume to Stories about our Dogs, and wrote also A Dog’s Mission. Matthew Arnold had many pets, and not only loved them in life, but has given them immortality by his appreciative tributes to dogs, and cat and canary. Here are two dog requiems: