Text Taken from a Memorial

“… . For if the dog be well remembered,
if sometimes she leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging,
it matters not where that dog sleeps.
On a hill where the wind is unrebuked
and the trees are roaring,
or beside a stream she knew in puppyhood,
or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland
where most exhilarating cattle graze.
It is one to a dog, and all one to you,
and nothing is gained and nothing lost— if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog.
If you bury her in this spot,
she will come to you when you call—come to you
over the grim, dim frontiers of death,
and down the well-remembered path
and to your side again.
And though you may call a dozen living dogs to heel,
they shall not growl at her nor resent her coming,
for she belongs there.
People may scoff at you,
who see no lightest blade of grass
bent by her footfall, who hear no whimper,
people who have never really had a dog.
Smile at them, for you shall know something
that is hidden from them.
The one best place to bury a good dog
is in the heart of her master…” Anonymous