MASTER M'GRATH has passed away;
He breathed his last on Christmas Day.
He quitted this terrestrial sphere,
In doghood's prime--his twice-third year.
He was a dog of high repute.
But now he'll be for ever mute.
--Though living he gave little tongue--
Ah, well! the dogs we love die young.
MASTER M'GRATH, old Ireland's pride,
The fleetest Saxon dogs defied,
Alike to run with him or kill:
His legs, once limber, now are still.
This peerless paragon of hounds,
Did win his good lord--LURGAN--pounds
By thousands; dog as good as horse--
The canine Courser is a corpse.
He was presented to the QUEEN,
As many a puppy may have been,
Who yet that honour lives to boast--
But is not worth the dog that's lost.
M'GRATH returns to his Dam Earth.
The papers mostly to his worth
Publish a tribute, not too long,
A paragraph--and here's a song.
They won't continue, for a week,
Each day about M'GRATH to speak
In memoirs, and in leading columns,
To preach of prosy sermons volumes.
Upon the Dog defunct that lies
Briefest is best to moralise,
As every dog, then, let us say,
Must have, M'GRATH has had his day.
* * * * *
Happy Dispatch.
WE have just read in a delightful book that "Japanese verse is for the
most part lyric or descriptive." It is of two kinds, "Uta," of purely
native growth, and "Shi," of Chinese origin and structure. The
difference between the Japanese and the English is that nearly all the
modern poetry of the latter is Shi.
* * * * *