Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/499

Rh Poor Matthias! Wouldst thou have

More than pity? claim'st a stave?

—Friends more near us than a bird

We dismiss'd without a word.

Rover, with the good brown head,

Great Atossa, they are dead;

Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme

Tells the praises of their prime.

Thou didst know them old and gray,

Know them in their sad decay.

Thou hast seen Atossa sage

Sit for hours beside thy cage;

Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,

Flutter, chirp—she never stirr'd!

What were now these toys to her?

Down she sank amid her fur;

Eyed thee with a soul resign'd—

And thou deemedst cats were kind!

—Cruel, but composed and bland,

Dumb, inscrutable and grand,

So Tiberius might have sat,

Had Tiberius been a cat.

Rover died—Atossa too.

Less than they to us are you!

Nearer human were their powers,

Closer knit their life with ours.

Hands had stroked them, which are cold,

Now for years, in churchyard mould;

Comrades of our past were they,

Of that unreturning day.

Changed and aging, they and we

Dwelt, it seem'd, in sympathy.

Alvvay from their presence broke