POETRY.

THE MIDNIGHT RACE.

(A supposed incident in the last railway war between the Great Northern aud London and North-Western Railway Companies.) LIE night on the world had nestled down,

He had spread his wings on the old grey town, And the suns stole round in the heights of the arc, But the low red lamps glowed dull in the dark As deep in the heart of the station's blare, The great express stood waiting there.

Then forth rung the stroke of the midnight hour, With its throb of bronze from each church and tower.

With a sevenfold heat and a sevenfold flame

We pass as the winds of creation once came.

And who shall hinder the storm and stress

Of the winged charge of the night express Sallying out in its might sublime,

With the clash of steel in a war with time 9 And a thunder loud and a music clear,

Crash forth with the leap of our mad career.

Through Dunbar we flashed, and through Durham fled, As forth from the muzzle the whirling lead.

O'er the Northern flats all blank and void,

We have Shivered the air, like an asteroid.

Let the pine-tree shake in the frightful glare Of the black express that is passing there I To ghostly huts in the moaning wood, Let our echoes swell and hurry the blood, Where forms are huddled, and faces pale, As we shake from the night on the grinding rail.

On Darlington's tangled points we hung, Then forth from its myriad mesh we flung, All hot on grinding the miles to naught,

In the grip of the wheels, as with time we fought, For who should seize on the foremost place In this storming charge, while to York we race.

So onward we shatter, by city and town,

Like a cataract thund'ring for ever down, Till our murmur dies in the straining ear, As a midnight breeze on a phantom mere.

A thin mist had spread, but, as it broke, York loomed, and the tongues of the Minster spoke, In a tocsin movement at first, but fast

On its track came the stroke of three, as a blast Bursts forth on the heels of a faint prelude

From the East in a tasselled Northern wood.

So the hours sweep on, but no faster than we In our whirling mist, till the white East sea Is far behind us, and London before Spreads its spectral arms like a curving shore,

To meet the swoop of the storming tide.

But we heard 'neath the glimmering glass-work wide, As the rim edged up of a blood-red sun,

A message that grew,—" We had won, we had won."

A. PATERSON WINGATE.