Lion Llewellyn, faithful friend,
Brave and gentle to the end,
Would that I once more might hail,
Like a banner on the gale,
Waving slow, thy jet-ringed tail!
And thy furry coat of mail,
Like the striped and spotted skin
Of thy savage leopard kin,
Would I might again caress
With the old-time tenderness!
Why do I talk of what may not be?
For the pillow of him I fain would see
Was changed long since from my motherly knee
To the garden, under the willow-tree,--
Weeping-willow and flowering moss.
Over it riseth nor pile nor cross;
We, who only have felt his loss,
Needing no sculptured stone to tell
How he battled, and how he fell,
Or where sleepeth who sleeps so well.
What is the destiny of his race?
Is there, I wonder, no other place
Whence they come or whither they go?
Earth-existence the all they know?
Does the living intelligence
Die in them with the dying sense?
Or, from the body passing hence,
Does it find in another sphere
Being in higher form than here?
For summers twain, the willow kept
Its watch where low the warrior slept,
But, on the third, a blight had crept
Upon the vigor of its frame;
Nor knew we how or whence it came.
Whisper it low and fearfully,
The tale of ghostly mystery;
For toothless crones and graybeards said
That from the presence of the dead
An influence around was shed,
Like warlock's foul, unholy spell,
Of malisons and curses fell,
Which steeped that soil with venom dank,
Of which the fated willow drank.
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