Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog

Listen to:

Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog (1:52)

by George Gordon, Lord Byron 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A Memorial to Boatswain

Newstead Abbey, November 30, 1808.

Near this spot

Are deposited the Remains of one

Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.

This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery

If inscribed over human ashes,

Is but a just tribute to the Memory of

BOATSWAIN, a DOG

Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,

And died at Newstead, Nov 18th, 1808.

When some proud son of man returns to earth,

Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,

The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,

And storied urns record who rest 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,

Debased 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.

To a Dog

Listen to:

To a Dog (1:00)

by John Jay Chapman

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Past happiness dissolves. It fades away, 

Ghost-like, in that dim attic of the mind 

To which the dreams of childhood are consigned. 

Here, withered garlands hang in slow decay, 

And trophies glimmer in the dying ray 

Of stars that once with heavenly glory shined. 

But you, old friend, are you still left behind 

To tell the nearness of life's yesterday? 

Ah, boon companion of my vanished boy, 

For you he lives; in every sylvan walk 

He waits; and you expect him everywhere. 

How would you stir, what cries, what bounds of joy, 

If but his voice were heard in casual talk, 

If but his footstep sounded on the stair! 

Leda and the Swan

Listen to:

Leda and the Swan (1:02)

by William Butler Yeats

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                                  Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Like as a Huntsman

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Like as a Huntsman (:53)

by Edmund Spenser

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Like as a huntsman after weary chase,

Seeing the game from him escap'd away,

Sits down to rest him in some shady place,

With panting hounds beguiled of their prey:

So after long pursuit and vain assay,

When I all weary had the chase forsook,

The gentle deer return'd the self-same way,

Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.

There she beholding me with milder look,

Sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:

Till I in hand her yet half trembling took,

And with her own goodwill here firmly tied.

Strange thing, me seem'd, to see a beast so wild,

So goodly won, with her own will beguil'd.

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass

Listen to:

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (:52)

by Emily Dickinson

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him, — did you not,

His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,

A floor too cool for corn.

Yet when a child, and barefoot,

I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash

Unbraiding in the sun, —

When, stooping to secure it,

It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

The Tiger

Listen to:

The Tiger (1:09)

by William Blake

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And, when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?