POETRY.

A HOPE.

I.

SLOWLY we gather and with pain

From many toils a scanty gain ; We strive to know, but scant our powers, And short the time and strait the bounds,.

And ever-unsurmounted towers The mortal barrier that surrounds Our being ; and the body still, Imperious slave, betrays the will.

Slowly we gather and with pain,—

But quick the scattering again ; Whether it chance the failing brain Lets slip the treasure it hath won Through weary days, or sudden blow Lays the unshattered fabric low, And all our doing is undone.

n.

Slowly a nation builds its life From barbarous chaos into law And kindly social ties and awe Of powers divine. For civil strife Still opens wide within the walls The yawning gulf that will not close Until the noblest victim falls ; Or, fierce without, the shock of foes In one wild hour of blood o'erthrows.

The labour of the patient years ; And when at last the work appears Complete in stately strength to stand,.

Riot with parricidal blow, Or mad ambition's traitor hand, Fierce clutching at the tyrant's crown,.

In headlong ruin lays it low, Or brute battalions tread it down, Or ease and luxury and sin, Fell cankers sown of peace, devour, Till trappings of imperial power Hide but the living death within.

m.

But doubtless growth repairs decay, And still the great world grows to more,.

Though men and nations pass away.

ut what if at the source of day Some cosmic change exhaust the store Which feeds the myriad forms of life ?

What if some unimagined strife Should raise so high the solar fire, That all this solid earthly frame Should in as brief a space expire As rain-drops in a furnace-flame ?

Iv.

Yet, if our faith is not the scheme

Of priestly cunning, nor a dream Which with some fair illusion caught Our ungrown Manhood's childish thought ; If Christmas tells us true, " To-day The Child Divine in Bethlehem lay ;" If He is Man who, past the ken Of Science in her widest range, Orders the law of ceaseless change, Content we know that lives of men

Pass as the leaves of spring away,—

That time will bring its final day To the great world itself, secure The Eternal Manhood shall endure.

ALFRED CHURCEL