THE BOOKWORM.

Dig ye, where no day is seen;
Vassals in the train of night,

Build the chambers for your queen,
Where with starless locks she lies,
Robbed of all her bright disguise!
There no precious dews alight,
None but what the cavern weeps,
Down its scarred and dusky face!
There's no bird in all the place;
Not a simple flower ye mark,
Not a shrub or vine that creeps
Through the long, long Lapland dark!
Burrow, burrow, like the mole,
Dark of face, but bright of soul !
Labour is not mean or low!
Ye achieve, with every blow,
Something higher than ye know!
Though your sight may not extend
Through your labours to the end,
Every honest stroke ye give,
Every peril that ye brave

In the dark and dangerous cave,
In some future good shall live.

THE BOOKWORM.

WITH spectacles upon his nose
He shuffles up and down,
Of antique fashion are his clothes,
His napless hat is brown ;

T. B. READ.

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A huge great watch of silver wrought
Keeps time in sun or rain,

To the dull ticking of the thought
Within his rusty brain.

The waves of life about him beat,
He scarcely lifts his gaze,
He hears within the crowded street
The wash of ancient days;
If ever his short-sighted eyes
Look forward, he can see
Vistas of dusty libraries

Prolong'd eternally.

The mighty world of human kind

Is as a shadow dim.

He walks through life like one half blind
And all looks dark to him;

He puts his nose to leaves antique,

And holds before his sight

Some prest and wither'd flowers of Greek,

And all is life and light.

But think not as he walks along

His brain is dead and cold,
His soul is thinking in the tongue

Which Plato* spake of old;

And while some grinning cabman sees

His quaint shape with a jeer,

He smiles, for Aristophanes+

Is joking in his ear!

* A great Greek Philosopher, the pupil of Socrates, who is referred to

below.

Aristophanes was a great Greek comic play-writer.

THE ORGAN-GRINDER.

Around him stretch Athenian walks
And strange shapes under trees,
He pauses in a dream and talks
Great speech with Socrates ;*
Then as the fancy fails, still mesh'd
In thoughts that go and come,
Feels in his pouch and is refresh'd
At touch of some old tome.

Oh, blessings on his hair so gray
And coat of dingy brown!
May bargains bless him every day
As he goes up and down!

Long may the bookstall keeper's face,
In dull times, smile again

To see him round with shuffling pace,
The corner of the lane.

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ALICE CARY.

THE ORGAN-GRINDER.

AN organ-grinder, meagre and sorrowful,
Stops in the sun in the street below;

The ragged street children came trooping about him,
Crowding and eager and glad, I know,
Their bright eyes peering through tangled tresses,
With childish wonder and happy trust:

Even the boys stare, quiet a moment,

Scraping their toes through the tawny dust.

* Plato wrote the Recollections of Socrates, and some Dialogues bringing out the method of questioning by which Socrates tried to elicit truth.

But the organ-grinder is bent and weary;
Nothing is new to him under the sun;
The tinkling notes of the old, old music,
Mean scanty crusts when the day is done.
The waltz may come, or an Ave Maria ;
The children may listen or run away;
The organ-grinder is old and weary,

And he turns this handle the live-long day.

What is he thinking, our tired brother?
What do these sorrowful grey eyes see!
Vacantly gazing-at nothing about him-
Is he looking in faces that used to be?
Is he thinking of old, old times and people,
Of days when the sun in truth was bright;
When the sweet winds blew to him perfumed fancies,
And sunset castles rose fair in his sight?

Does he hear, instead of the old, old music,
His brown, stiff fingers are grinding out,
The dear wife's laugh in the pleasant twilight,
And the baby's step and tiny shout?
Does he feel the pressure of loving fingers-
Deadly chill when he touched them last!—
Biding the troubled dream of the present
In the gracious glow from the real past?

Our worn-out brother! He is only weary,
No fairy dreams are kissing his eyes;
His life is sordid, and narrow and sorrowful :
The pennies fall rarely-for this he sighs.
No lovely phantoms are floating about him;

No echoes are sounding within his breast
From the voice Divine of that love supernal,

Which shall surely somewhere give him rest.

THE BLIND BEGGAR.

And the bruised spirit is mate with the body;
He will hear with a stare that God is good.
Silently add to the store of his pennies,

And brighten his desolate solitude.
Stifle the Pharisee-pity that rises!

Who links the merciless chain of fate? Through what dim cycles slow gather its atoms, In what fine junctions-while we wait?

THE BLIND BEGGAR.

HE sits by the great high road all day,

The beggar blind and old;

The locks on his brow are thin and gray,
And his lips are blue and cold.

I

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