31 OCTOBER 1896, Page 17

POETRY.

TO

WHERE rock-crown'd headlands front the glittering bays,

All set with purpled islets, in the West, Drawn by the beauty, each a chancing guest Unknown before, we tarried certain days.

Ah ! why are we so tangled in the maze Of custom's bondage that the yearning breast Must inly hide its fairest and its best Beneath the commonplace of social ways ?

I knew that thou didst love all gracious things, And all sweet utterance of poet's dream, And yet our words touch'd not the soul's deep springs, Bat skimmed the idle suface of the stream.

Still evermore thy name will bring to me Visions of sunlit bills and shimmering sea.

W. WALSHAM WAKEFIELD.