Creeds change as ages come and go; We see by faith, but little know: Perchance the sense was not so dim, To her who strove to follow Him."

RIGHT.

The hours are growing shorter for the millions who are toiling,

And the homes are growing better for the millions yet to be;

And the poor shall learn the lesson, how that waste and sin are spoiling

The fairest and the finest of a grand humanity. It is coming! it is coming! and men's thoughts are growing deeper;

They are giving of their millions as they never gave before;

They are learning the new Gospel; man must be his brother's keeper,

And right, not might, shall triumph, and the selfish rule no more.

GIRLHOOD.

-The New Era.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

His

ICHARD CRASHAW, now nearly two and a general readers of poetry until the middle of the present century, when in a few anthologies he was appreciatively, but inadequately, represented. poems ran through several editions during his lifetime, and were reprinted in 1652 and 1670, after which no issue appeared until they were included in the bulky collections of Chalmers and Anderson (1793-1810), with the exception of the selection made by Peregrine Phillips, published in 1785. Dr. Johnson did not include Crashaw in his " Lives of the Poets," though he included the lives of much inferior poets in that work. Pope appreciated Crashaw, but his higher qualities seem to have been unperceived or ignored by the author of "The Dunciad." He said of him that he was none of the worst versificators;" and considered his best pieces to be the paraphrase of Psalm xxiii, On Lessius, Epitaph on Mr. Ashton, Wishes to his supposed Mistress, and Dies Iræ." What can be said of such judgment in the face of such glorious poems as "Music's Duel," "Sospetto d' Herode," To the Name above every name," Hymn to St. Teresa,' Psalm cxxxvii," "To the Morning," etc.? Crashaw's verse is marked by some of the highest qualities of poetry. He has strong affinities to two of our great nineteenth-century poets; he has the rich imagination and sensuousness of Keats, and the subtlety of thought and exquisite lyrical flow of Shelley.

46

Crashaw is essentially a sacred poet, and, compared with George Herbert, is his superior, judged from the purely poetic standpoint. Herbert is, in a limited degree, a popular poet; Crashaw is not, and has never been so. One of the reasons for this is (probably) the taste for artificial poetry of the school of Waller, Dryden, Pope, etc., during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fact of his being a Catholic would also deter many readers from studying his works; but, poetical thought now being wider, and religious intolerance almost a thing of the past, it may be hoped that Crashaw will soon receive the recognition which is his due.

The text of the following selections follows that adopted and amended from original sources by Rev. A. B. Grosart in his complete edition of Crashaw's Works in "The Fuller Worthies' Library," but the spelling has been modernized.

MUSIC'S DUEL.

J. R. T.

Now Westward Sol had spent the richest beams Of Noon's high glory, when hard by the streams

Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat

A sweet Lute's-master, in whose gentle airs
He lost the day's heat, and his own hot cares.
Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A Nightingale, come from the neighboring wood:
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their Muse, their Syren - harmless Syren she!)
There stood she list'ning, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs, that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good:
The man perceived his rival, and her art;
Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet præludium

Of closer strains, and ere the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string,
Charged with a flying touch: and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions,
Quick volumes of wild notes; to let him know
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hands' instinct then taught each
string

A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that; then quick returning skips
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere
Meets art with art; sometimes as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that being rear'd
In controverting warbles evenly shared,
With her sweet self she wrangles. He amazed
That from so small a channel should be raised
The torrent of a voice, whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet; that tickled with rare art
The tattling strings (each breathing in his part)
Most kindly do fall out; the grumbling base
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace;
The high-perch'd treble chirps at this, and chides,
Until his finger (Moderator) hides

And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all,
Hoarse, shrill at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to th' harvest of Death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands: this lesson too

She gives him back; her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in wav'd notes with a trembling bill
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short, thick sobs, whose thund'ring volleys
float,

And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring; the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie,
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot, whence in ripen'd airs

A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

His honey-dropping tops, plough'd by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboreth

In that sweet soil; it seems a holy quire
Founded to the name of great Apollo's lyre,
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel-imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft-anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing:
(Most divine service) whose so early lay,
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing Day!
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice,
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,
And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream, so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Wing'd with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the way'd back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train.
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note,
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of War's hoarse
bird;

Her little soul is ravish'd: and so pour'd
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, Music's Enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mixed a double stain
In the Musician's face; yet once again
(Mistress) I come; now reach a strain my lute,
Above her mock, or be for ever mute;

Or tune a song of victory to me,

Or to thyself, sing thine own obsequy:
So said, his hands sprightly as fire, he flings
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.
The sweet-lipp'd sisters, musically frighted,
Singing their fears, are fearfully delighted,
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fann'd and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath: which married to his lyre

Doth tune the spheres, and make Heaven's self
look higher.

From this to that, from that to this he flies.

Feels Music's pulse in all her arteries;
Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads,
His fingers struggle with the vocal threads.
Following those little rills, he sinks into
A sea of Helicon; his hand does go

Those paths of sweetness which with nectar drop,
Softer than that which pants in Hebe's cup.
The humorous strings expound his learned touch,
By various glosses; now they seem to grutch,
And murmur in a buzzing din, then gingle
In shrill-tongued accents: striving to be single.
Every smooth turn, every delicious stroke
Gives life to some new grace; thus doth h' invoke
Sweetness by all her names; thus, bravely thus,
(Fraught with a fury so harmonious)

The lute's light genius now does proudly rise,
Heaved on the surges of swollen rhapsodies,
Whose flourish (meteor-like) doth curl the air
With flash of high-born fancies: here and there
Dancing in lofty measures, and anon
Creeps on the soft touch of a tender tone;
Whose trembling murmurs melting in wild airs
Runs to and fro, complaining his sweet cares,
Because those precious mysteries that dwell
In Music's ravish'd soul, he dare not tell,
But whisper to the world: thus do they vary
Each string his note, as if they meant to carry
Their Master's blest soul (snatch'd out at his ears
By a strong ecstasy) through all the spheres
Of Music's heaven; and seat it there on high
In the empyrean of pure harmony.
At length (after so long, so loud a strife
Of all the strings, still breathing the best life
Of blest variety, attending on
His fingers' fairest revolution

In many a sweet rise, many as sweet a fall)
A full-mouth'd diapason swallows all.

This done, he lists what she would say to this, And she, (although her breath's late exercise Had dealt too roughly with her tender throat,) Yet summons all her sweet powers for a note. Alas! in vain! for while (sweet soul!) she tries To measure all those wild diversities

Of chatt'ring strings, by the small size of one

Poor simple voice, raised in a natural tone;
She fails, and failing grieves, and grieving dies.
She dies: and leaves her life the Victor's prize,
Falling upon his lute; O, fit to have
(That lived so sweetly) dead, so sweet a grave!

AN EPITAPH UPON MR. ASHTON, A
CONFORMABLE CITIZEN.

THE modest front of this small floor,
Believe me, Reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can;
Here lies a truly honest man.

One whose conscience was a thing,
That troubled neither Church nor King.
One of those few that in this town,
Honor all Preachers, hear their own.
Sermons he heard, yet not so many
As left no time to practice any.
He heard them rev'rently, and then
His practice preach'd them o'er again.
His Parlor-Sermons rather were
Those to the eye, than to the ear.
His prayers took their price and strength,
Not from the loudness, nor the length.
He was a Protestant at home,
Not only in despite of Rome.
He loved his Father; yet his zeal
Tore not off his Mother's veil.

To th' Church he did allow her dress,
True Beauty, to true Holiness.
Peace, which he loved in life, did lend
Her hand to bring him to his end.
When Age and Death call'd for the score
No surfeits were to reckon for.

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

'HE year 1860 is notable as the birth-year of at

all of whom are now familiarly known to readers of the verse of our day, and who gained the public ear at not far from the same time: Charles G. D. Roberts, Dempster Sherman and Clinton Scollard. Clinton Scollard, the youngest of the trio by a few months was born in the village of Clinton, Oneida County, New York, September 18, 1860. His father, Dr. James J. Scollard, has been for many years a physician of note in that locality and still in middle life remains in the active practice of his profession besides being connected with many of the leading business interests in that region. Clinton, his only son, was educated at private schools in his native town and after passing four years successfully at Hamilton College in the same place, was graduated from that institution in 1881. Like most boys with literary leanings, he wrote more or less indifferent verse and prose during his later years at school and in his college course. His father seems hardly to have approved of these early efforts, but his mother encouraged him by her intelligent sympathy, criticising freely and praising where praise could fairly be given. Little of this first work has been preserved. A certain ease of rhyming was its most noteworthy characteristic as it is a pronounced feature of his later work.

For a year or two after leaving college Mr. Scollard was engaged as a teacher of elocution in a school in Brooklyn, New York, and then, his health becoming uncertain, he spent some time in travel in California and Florida. During these few years he wrote much in verse, and in December, 1884, published a collection of a number of his poems with the title, "Pictures in Song." This book could not be called a strong one, but showed promise and was pleasantly noticed by the reviewers.

In October, 1884, Mr. Scollard removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was for two years a graduate student at Harvard University, devoting his attention while there mainly to purely literary courses of study. During these years he wrote largely and his verse appeared in periodical literature with increasing frequency. "With Reed and Lyre," his second book, was published in September, 1886, and met with favorable attention in many quarters. The latter half of 1886 was spent by Mr. Scollard in European travel, and returning in January, 1887, he conducted classes in literature in Boston and Cambridge. A second trip to Europe was made by him in July of the same year. In September, 1888, he was appointed assistant professor of rhetoric and literature at Hamilton College, a position he now holds. "Old and New World Lyrics," his third volume, appeared in November. 1888. O. F. A.

A SNOWFLAKE IN MAY.

I SAW a snowflake in the air

When smiling May had decked the year, And then 't was gone, I knew not where,— I saw a snowflake in the air,

And thought perchance an angel's prayer Had fallen from some starry sphere;

I saw a snowflake in the air

When smiling May had decked the year.

A TWILIGHT PIECE.

I STRAYED from the bower of the roses as the dusk of the day drew on,

From the purple palm-tree closes where the crimson cactus shone;

Along the sycamore alley and up through the town I strode,

Nor paused where the gay groups dally at curves of the wide white road.

And I came to a pathway climbing through an olive orchard gray,

As the last faint bells were chiming in a chapel far away.

Only the stir of the lizard in the long sparse grass I heard,

And the wind, like an unseen wizard, with its mystical whispered word. But at last I broke from the glooming of boughs, and the darkling place,

And beheld tall warders looming o'er a wide and lonely space;·

Old cypress trees intoning a chant that was weird and low,

And as sad as the ghostly moaning from the lips

of the Long-ago.

Here many a time at the margin of day, ere the bats grew brave,

Had I seen the low sun sink large in the dip of

the western wave;

Seen the hues of the magical painter flush half of

the sky's broad zone,

And then grow fainter and fainter till the flowers of the night were blown,

Enwrapt by the drowsy quiet, I sank on the turf, and long

I yearned for the rhythmic riot of the night-bird's soaring song;

A song that should pulse and thrill me, and tides of the heart unbar,

A song that should surge and fill me with thoughts of a clime afar;

For I felt the passionate sadness of the mourner who may not weep,