POETRY.'

FIVE SONNETS.

I.—THE RIVALS.

MAN'S good and evil angels came to dwell As housemates, at his board and hearth alway ; One, secret as the night, one, frank as day, Both lovely, and in puissance matched full well.

Each hourly strove her sleepless foe to quell, And ever and anon the bright fiend lay Foiled, and her countenance, racked with sick dismay„ Changed, and its tyrannous beauty masklike fell.

Ah, could man's thought for ever fix and stay That glimpse of horrors he might quake to tell, 'Twere easy, then, the temptress to repel I But 'neath the glorious mask and brave array How shall he know thee, leprous witch of hell,. Robed to allure and fanged to rend and slay P II.—THE SOUL'S OPPORTUNITY.

My friend the kindly champion of his kind, Who loves not God, or loves Him unaware, Loving in man whatever is most fair, Said lightly : " Him whom men adore I find Less worshipful than is the adoring mind.

Poorly His deeds, that cost Him nought, compare- With splendour of the lowliest soul that e'er Bore others' pain and its own bliss resigned ! "

Friend, is this truth P The more effulgent, then, Blazes the magnanimity of God, Who, making steep our path and hard to ken, With doubts begirt us and with weakness shod,. Since thus alone was possible to men A peak of glory not Himself had trod.

III.—MALIGN BEAUTY.

A face like morning, with a heart of night Not though in deserts fanged with death thou roam> Or couch 'mid monsters of the ooze and foam, Shalt thou be blasted with so dread a sight As when a soul whose errand is to blight And shatter, makes a glorious body its home, Foul tenant of a stately palace-dome, Imperial towers, and gardens of delight.

Look through her windows ! See,—a pilgrim guest Is feasted by the bounteous ehkelaine. Fledged are the hours with wine and song and jest.. The morrow cometh. Shall he rise and he Forth on his way P He grasps his staff in vain, In her deep dungeons flung, to rot and die.

IV.—NIGHT AND A STAR. Fast bound I sat, the thrall of inward gloom ;

Heard the great tidal rhythm of Life and Law, Unheeding ; and without emotion saw The flowerlike world's immortal tint and bloom. And a voice echoed through my soul's dark room : " 0 helpless on fate's torrent as a straw ! To strive—to fail—to feed oblivion's maw— Such, and no more, thy work and wage and doom!"

Then, from some height beyond these dusks and dews, Methought a sphery whisper fluttered down : "To suffer and in silence build thy days, To knit life firm and earn thine own soul's praise,— Such, if thou wilt (for power is thine to choose), Such, and so great, thy task and meed and crown."

V.—TO ONE WHO HAD WRITTEN IN DERISION OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.

Dismiss not so, with light, hard phrase and cold, Ev'n if it be but fond imagining, The hope whereto so passionately cling The dreaming generations from of old!

Not thus, to luckless men, are tidings told Of mistress lost, or riches taken wing ; And is eternity a slighter thing, To have or lose, than kisses or than gold ?

Nay, tenderly, if needs thou. must, disprove My loftiest fancy, dash my grand desire To see this curtain lift, these clouds retire, And Truth, a boundless dayspring, blaze above And round me ; and to ask of my dead sire His pardon for each word that wronged his love.

WILLIAM WATSON.