Mock of knave and sport of child, In his own good city!

"Speak the word, and, master mine, As we charged on Tilly's line,

And his Walloon lancers, Smiting through their midst we 'll teach Civil look and decent speech

To these boyish prancers!"

"Marvel not, mine ancient friend,
Like beginning, like the end":

Quoth the Laird of Ury,
"Is the sinful servant more
Than his gracious Lord who bore
Bonds and stripes in Jewry?

"Give me joy that in his name
I can bear, with patient frame,

All these vain ones offer; While for them He suffereth long, Shall I answer wrong with wrong, Scoffing with the scoffer?

"Happier I, with loss of all, Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,

With few friends to greet me,

Than when reeve and squire were seen, Riding out from Aberdeen,

With bared heads to meet me.

"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, Blessed me as I passed her door;

And the snooded daughter, Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown

From red fields of slaughter.

"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, Hard the old friend's falling off,

Hard to learn forgiving: But the Lord his own rewards, And his love with theirs accords,

Warm and fresh and living.

"Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light

Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest

For the full day-breaking!"

So the Laird of Ury said,
Turning slow his horse's head

Towards the Tolbooth prison, Where, through iron grates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word

Preach of Christ arisen!

Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told

Of thy day of trial;
Every age on him, who strays
From its broad and beaten ways,
Pours its sevenfold vial.

Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,

O'er the rabble's laughter;
And, while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.

Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set

In the world's wide fallow; After hands shail sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,
Must the moral pioneer

From the Future borrow:
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

WHAT THE VOICE SAID.

MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil, "Lord!" I cried in sudden ire, "From thy right hand, clothed with thunder,

Shake the bolted fire!

"Love is lost, and Faith is dying;

With the brute the man is sold; And the dropping blood of labor Hardens into gold.

"Here the dying wail of Famine, There the battle's groan of pain, And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon Reaping men like grain.

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"Earnest words must needs be spoken

When the warm heart bleeds or burns
With its scorn of wrong, or pity
For the wronged, by turns.

"But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.

"Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty
To thy lips her trumpet set,
But with harsher blasts shall mingle
Wailings of regret."

Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,
Teacher sent of God, be near,
Whispering through the day's cool
silence,

Let my spirit hear!

For Earth he asks it: the full joy of Heaven

Knoweth no change of waning or increase;

The great heart of the Infinite beats

even,

Untroubled flows the river of his

peace.

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Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor

Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease;

Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,

Andin itsashes plant the tree of peace!

THE DEMON OF THE STUDY.

THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,

And eats his meat and drinks his ale, And beats the maid with her unused broom,

And the lazy lout with his idle flail, But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,

And hies him away ere the break of dawn.

Theshade of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barnloft cheer,

The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,

Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk's side in social chat.

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him

Who seven times crossed the deep, Twined closely each lean and withered limb,

Like the nightmare in one's sleep. But he drank of the wine, and Sinbad

cast

The evil weight from his back at last.

But the demon that cometh day by day

To my quiet room and fireside nook, Where the casement light falls dim and gray

On faded painting and ancient book, Is a sorrier one than any whose names Are chronicled well by good king James.

No bearer of burdens like Caliban,

No runner of errands like Ariel, He comes in the shape of a fat old man, Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;