I WAS HAVING my usual Messenger chat with my mom. She shared with me one of the poems by the famous writer Lord Byron entitled “Epitaph to a Dog”. It was written in honor of Byron’s Newfoundland dog, Boatswain, who died of rabies. The lines that really struck me were the first few that went like this:
“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of Man without his vices.”
The rest of the poem goes on about how if men die, corrupt as they may be, they are immortalized in the grave and are given the chance to go to heaven. A dog that loyally serves and protects though is “denied in heaven the soul he held on Earth.”
My mother said she got emotional reading it because she remembered some of our dogs that passed away.
Frankly, I myself felt an overwhelming sadness when I read the poem. As someone who has lived with dogs all her life, I can’t help but think about how sad it is that once a dog passes away, the most we have to remember it by is a few pictures and a mound in the garden.
I think I referenced a long time ago in one of my previous articles how “All dogs go to heaven”. Honestly, however, this belief in the “Rainbow Bridge” may just be a case of wishful thinking.
I have seen my fair share of how delicate a dog’s life can be. If a dog is a beloved pet, at least it has humans that will mourn over its loss.
There are those less lucky that live on the streets though. The end can come for them as gruelingly long as several days of hunger or an untreated illness, or as quickly as a wrong mishap with a speeding vehicle.
Sadly for those unlucky ones, nobody will even notice they are gone. The most attention they may get is disgust and annoyance from where that awful smell is coming from. The phrase “It’s a dog’s life”, meaning a miserably unhappy existence, was even coined to show how these animals exist in a world full of cruelty. Yet even though the world is rarely fair to them, they still remain innocent, resorting to violence only if their safety is in jeopardy.
That is why those first few lines in the epitaph are my favorite. It perfectly describes what a dog is. Beauty, strength and courage. Truly one of God’s biggest gifts to the world./PN
