"I LIVE here: 'Wessex' is my name: I am a dog known rather well: I guard the house; but how that came To be my whim I cannot tell. "With a leap and a heart elate I go At the end of an hour's expectancy To take a walk of a mile or so With the folk I let live here with me. "Along the path, amid the grass I sniff, and find out rarest smells For rolling over as I pass The open fields towards the dells. "No doubt I shall always cross this sill, And turn the corner, and stand steady, Gazing back for my mistress till She reaches where I have run already, "And that this meadow with its brook, And bulrush, even as it appears As I plunge by with hasty look, Will stay the same a thousand years." Thus "Wessex." But a dubious ray At times informs his steadfast eye, Just for a trice, as though to say, "Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?" |