Each has her task, decorous, sweet,

Fair, to surpass your friends, she made you, While for your hidden foes' defeat

I in your Pauline arms arrayed you.

Yet, though the clasps endure, I know
I'll wish our handiwork were neater
When at celestial gates you show

The well-known harness to St. Peter.

HELEN PARRY EDEN.

THE SHIP

The patient bravery of a ship that has not been fighting, nor making money by commerce, but has been through trouble and makes no boast of it.

THERE was no song nor shout of joy
Nor beam of moon or sun,

When she came back from the voyage

Long ago begun ;

But twilight on the waters

Was quiet and gray,

And she glided steady, steady and pensive, Over the open bay.

Her sails were brown and ragged,

And her crew hollow-eyed,

But their silent lips spoke content

And their shoulders pride;

Though she had no captives on her deck,

And in her hold

There were no heaps of corn or timber

Or silks or gold.

JOHN COLLINS SQUIRE.

SLEEPING SEA

Note the effect of silence that words can give. In the long lines of the metre I feel the motion-hardly motion of a silently rising tide, and in the short lines the little pause before another long soft advance.

THE Sea

Was even as a little child that sleeps

And keeps

All night its great unconsciousness of day.

No spray

Flashed when the wave rose, drooped, and slowly drew away.

No sound

From all the slumbering, full-bosomed water

came;

The Sea

Lay mute in childlike sleep, the moon was as a candle-flame.

No sound

Save when a faint and mothlike air fluttered around.

No sound

But as a child that dreams, and in his full sleep

cries,

So turned the sleeping Sea and heaved her bosom

of slow sighs.

JOHN FREEMAN.

THE BELLS OF HEAVEN

There is hardship for animals that cannot be helped -it is part of the laws of nature. But man, who knows right from wrong, will certainly one day cease to take pleasure in performing" animals, and in coursing hares; and means will be found to save pit-ponies from the darkness of the mine and of their blindness.

"

'TWOULD ring the bells of Heaven
The wildest peal for years,

If parson lost his senses

And people came to theirs,
And he and they together

Knelt down with angry prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers,
And dancing dogs and bears,
And wretched blind pit-ponies,
And little hunted hares.

RALPH HODGSON.

STUPIDITY STREET

The birds eat the worm and guard the wheat; and the wheat is the staff of man's life. "Stupidity Street" is not a street common in English towns, happily. In Italy no great dinner is complete without a dish of small birds. We, at any rate, have a good angry poet to tell us of our folly.

I SAW with open eyes
Singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops
For the people to eat,
Sold in the shops of
Stupidity Street.

I saw in vision

The worm in the wheat,
And in the shops nothing
For people to eat;
Nothing for sale in
Stupidity Street.

RALPH HODGSON.

FOREFATHERS

It is good to read manly and tender words of respect for the unknown villagers who did their work and went to their rest leaving no name or record. We inherit their good building, their thick walls, their steady roofs, and the example of their duty and dignity, without knowing to whom we are in debt.

HERE they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook

And here their hatchet cleared the glade.
Harvest-supper woke their wit,

Huntsman's moon their wooings lit.

From this church they led their brides,
From this church themselves were led
Shoulder-high; on these waysides

Sat to take their beer and bread.
Names are gone-what men they were
These their cottages declare.

Names are vanished, save the few
In the old brown Bible scrawled ;
These were men of pith and thew,
Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
Built the barn, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,

As their fathers watched them once,

As my father once watched me;