POETRY.

"FIAT LUX."

WORRY and talk—and obstruct and bore— Make better men than yourselves your sport ; Down with the many, and up with the few ; Yet which be the judge in the last resort, The people, or you ?

English and Irish Wolff alike,

Howling in type with their stale unrest; Lords in a quake for the wrath to come; True aristocracy—rule of the best—

Neither deaf, nor dumb.

Watching your suicide, slow and sure, Quietly laughing with laughing Time, Sad for the great hearts worn and spent,. And sick with your baby-pantomime, But of strong intent.

Boys of old were content to learn, When a master-wisdom thought and spoke ; Years are knowledge, and Faith is truth, When work has ripened to noble oak The sapling of youth.

Modern boys but aspire to yelp

Like bull-pups, promising (more or less), At the letter L., when their own is C., ' Till a slow-moved nation as one confess

That the end mast be.

Masterful scorn grows deep and strong, Of the same farce night by night played out ; For the ball-pup pipes in a spaniel's note, When a C. puts L. to the right-about,

According to vote.

"E pur si muove ;" from free to freer, Steered by the central Master-mind, Man on his march goes on to right, And the more that the Darkness frowns behind, The nearer is Light.

Ye that work for the Master's sake, Stand for the good, as ye hold it dear, For at every jibe and at every check Clearer the goal grows and more clear, And no neck-and-neck.

Not yet many days can the Rights of Self, Pleaded and cried for more and more, Force all the rights of others back, Not to be crushed as they sank before, Under steel and rack.

" Society " drones her cuckoo-notes Shriller and feebler hour by hour, Vulgar ever, and ever wrong, Though puffed by a forty-horse journal power In their idle song.

Little can Counsel think or do, But shrug its shoulders and pass you by, Leaving the force of Truth to win, And the great, strong Many to fructify, Where the strong begin.

Yet, ye Churchills that sow the wind, Little almighties untaught to sow, Feel but the mock of a laugher's rhyme,— Ware of sand-homes when the whirlwinds blow, And be wise in time. H. M.