I ran across this poem about a hound’s death and could not find the author. Does anyone here recognize it?
Who mourns the soul of a hound when he dies?
Who even knows that he’s gone?
The Master, the Huntsman, they miss him perhaps,
And the farm where his walking was done,
But when once again on the Opening Day,
The Season’s first music rings clear,
Which of us misses the voice that is gone,
Or spares him a sorrowful tear?
They try for us, cry for us, gallop and fly for us -
Gad how the beauties can move!
In the whole of the Shires not a pack to touch ours,
But it’s hounds, not the hound, that we love.
There’s few of us see in the course of a day
How Harmony worked out that line;
How Destiny’s Dabster takes after his dam,
Or the work of that new bitch, Divine.
Each has his temperament, each has his tricks
The joy of them few of us know;
Few of us worry, and few of us care -
We still have the pack when they go.
Only the Master, who growls out to Tom
In a voice gone surprisingly gruff -
‘Sexton must go, Tom, he’s getting damm’ slow -
God knows we shall miss him enough."
But if he goes lonely, unwept and unsung,
That foxhound forgotten too soon,
I like to think that the pack sings his dirge
In the night when they sing to the moon.
