Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal
clown
Whose arm is strouger free to knock us
down ?
Has every scarecrow, whose eachectic soul
Seems — from Bedlam, airing on pa-
role,
Who, though he carries buf a doubtful
trace
Of angel visits on his hungry face, *
From lack of marrow or the coins to pay,
Ilas dogged some vices in a shabby way,
The right to stiek ug with his cutthroat
terns,
And bait his homilies with his brother
worms ?
THE MIND'S DIET
No life worth naming ever comes to good
If always nourished on the selfsame food;
The creeping mite may live so if he please,
And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese,
But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt,
If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out.
No reasoning natures find it safe to feed,
For their sole diet, on a single creed;
It spoils their eyeballs while it spares their tongues,
And starves the heart to feed the noisy lungs.
When the first larvæ on the elm are seen,
The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green;
Ere chill October shakes the latest down,
They, like the foliage, change their tint to brown;
On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy,
You stretch to pluck it — 'tis a butterfly;
The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark,
They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark;
The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud,
Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for its blood;
So by long living on a single lie,
Nay on one truth, will creatures get its day;
Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,—
Except when squabbling turns them black and blue!
OUR LIMITATIONS
We trust and fear, we question and
believe,
From life’s dark threads a trembling faith
to weave,
Frail as the web that misty night has spun,
Whoze dew-gemmed awnings glitter in the
sun,
While the calm centuries epell their lassona
out,
Each truth we conquer spreads the realm
of donbt;
When Sinai’s summit was Jehoyal’s
throne,
The chosen Prophet knew his voice alone;
When Pilate’s hall that awful question
heard,
The Heavenly Captive answered not a
word,
Eternal Truth! beyond our hopes and
fears
Sweep the yust orbits of thy myriad
spheres !
From age to age, while History carves
sublime
On her waste rock the flaming curves of
time,
How the wild swayings of our planet show
That worlds uuseen surround the world we
kuow. ,
THE OLD PLAYER
THE curtain rose; in thunders lung and.
loud
The galleries rung; the veteran actor
bowed.
Tn flaming line the telltales of the stage
Showed on his brow the autograph of age;
Pale, hucloss waves amid his clustered hair,
Aud umbered shadows, prints of toil and
vare 5
Round the wide cirele glanced hia vacant
eye; — :
He atrove to speak, —his voice was but a
sigh,
