POETRY.

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS.*

I.

BY cliff and chine, and hollow-nestling wood Thrilled with the poignant savour of the era, All in the crisp light of a wintry morn, • We are informed that the American copyright of these lines has been secured for Mr. Watson by Messrs. Macmillan and Co.

We walked, my friend and I, preceded still By one whose silken and voluminous suit, His courtly ruff, snow-pure 'mid golden tan, Rig eramlly feathered legs slenderly strong, The broad and flowing billow of his breast, His delicate ears and superfine long nose, With that last triumph, his distinguished tail, In their collective glory spoke his race The flower of Collie aristocracy.

Yet, from his traits, how absent that reserve, That stillness on a base of power, which marks, In men and mastiffs, the selectly sprung !

For after all, his high-life attributes, His trick of doing nothing with an air,

His salon manners and society smile,

Were but skin-deep, factitious, and you saw The bust ng despot of the mountain flock, And pastoral dog-of-all-work, underlie

The fashionable modern lady's pet,—

Industrial impulses bereft of scope, Duty and discipline denied an aim, Ancestral energy and strenuousness In graceful trifling frittered all away.

Witness the depth of his concern and zeal About minutest issues: shall we take

This path or that P—it matters not a straw—

But just a moment unresolved we stand, And all his personality, from ears To tip of tail, is interrogative; And when from pure indifference we decide, How he vociferates ! how he bounds ahead !

With what enthusiasm he ratifies, Applauds, acclaims our choice 'twixt right and left, As though some hoary problem over which The world had puckered immemorial brows, Were solved at last, and all life launched anew!

Thee and a thousand tricks and ways and traits I noted as of democratic root, And foreign to the staid, conservative, Came-over-with-the-Conqueror type of mind.

And then, his nature, how impressionable, How quickly moved to Collie mirth or woe, Elated or dejected at a word And how unlike your genuine Vere de Vere's Frigid, indifferent, half-ignoring glance At everything outside the sacred pale Of things De Veres have sanctioned from the Flood, The unweariable curiosity And universal open-mindedness Of that all-testing, all-inquisitive nose !

So, to my friend's house, back we strolled; and there—

We loitering in the garden—from her post Of purview at a window, languidly A great Angora watched his Collieship, And throned in monumental calm, surveyed His effervescence, volatility, Clamour on slight occasion, fussiness, Herself immobile, imperturbable, Like one whose vision seeks the Immanent Behind these symbols and appearances, The face within this transitory mask.

And as her eyes with indolent regard Viewed his upbubblings of ebullient life, She seemed the Orient Spirit incarnate, lost.

In contemplation of the Western Soul !

Ev'n so, methought, the genius of the East, Reposeful, patient, undemonstrative, Luxurious, enigmatically sage, Dispassionately cruel, might look down On all the fever of the Occident ;— The brooding mother of the unfilial world, Recumbent on her own antiquity, Aloof from our mutations and unrest,

Alien to our achievements and desires, Too proud alike for protest or assent When new thoughts thunder at her massy door ;— Another brain dreaming another dream, Another heart recalling other loves, Too grey and grave for our adventurous hopes, For our precipitate pleasures too august, And in majestic taciturnity Refraining her illimitable scorn.

WILLIAM Wiasow...