Selections From Recent Poetry.

Learning to swim , who suddenly is seized AVith panic that at once unnerves his limbs , Makes his brain giddy , drags him struggling down To the deep bottom , terrified and spent , AA'ith courage gone for ever . You may make AA'ith such continual training , not a groat High character , but something fair and sweet ,

And very fit to grace an honest hearth ; To share a good man's heart and confidence , And , like a violet worn upon his breast , AVith simple sweetness ever solace him .

Select another for apprenticeship To the world's service ; teach her tacitly—She'll seize your meaning quick enough , be sure—¦ The science of appearances ; to skim Upon the surfaces of Life , of Art , Of Knowledge , of Religion : never heed AVhat she is fitted for . She has no ear , No taste for music ?—That ' s unfortunate

, For music she must learn;—days , weeks , months , years , Of tears , and labour , and discouragement Must go to the performance of quadrilles , And " brilliant pieces , " jingle , crash and froth , Most vilely executed as a task By trembling , blundering fingers , to a group Of tortured listeners . She has no eye For form or colour ?—She must learn to draw

; To reproduce , with labour infinite , Some lithograph , conventional ancl false . — She must read too , —to say that she has read ; Must go to church , because 'tis right to give Two hours in seven days to certain forms , However tedious , to keep well with God , And set a good example to the poor . Adornment , dress are easier ; indeed ,

These almost come by nature ,- —like small talk ; Some training at the outset is required To make distinctions between elder sons And younger ; but this too is learnt in time . And so the little heart and little brain , Unexercised , dry up ; the empty form Still moves and speaks in ball-rooms , very like A woman , but at home the soulless thing Subsides again to dollhood without springs .

And so on with the rest . Of one you make A mawkish sentimentalist ; a fourth Becomes a harsh sectarian , morose Unbending and intolerant ; a fifth A feeble hoyden , making herself sick AVith smoking ; trying to talk slang and hide Her deadly terror of a wainscot mouse .

A sixth , no worse by nature than the rest , Falls into evil hands ; becomes the tool Of some designing woman , or the toy Of some base man . Lower and lower still She falls , she has not heart enough to cling AVhere first she fell aud go no deeper down , But drops from sin to vice ; grows cynical And utterly corrupted ; casts aside

Distinctions between right and wrong , admits The existence but of matter ; worships gain , Becomes divested of the instinctive love That reigns amid the very animals , More brutalized than brutes , and lives and dies A monstrous blot and stain to womanhood .

De Corona.

DE CORONA .

UT JOHN EDMUND MADE . REJOICE thou like that Spartan of old date , AA ho on one utterance of a soul sedate Stamped immortality ; content to be That which ho was , that others should believe " Sparta had many a worthier son than he ;" AVhere lesser spirits had succumbed , elate .

Do thou that great denial contemplate ! For oh , unworthy had it been to grieve At breath of popular rumour , or forget The selfrespect of proud humility ; Or the wreath cast on fortunate brows regret ; Or with impatience Fret his mighty heart ; Or , an inferior actor , vainly jirize The clamours ofthe few ; or learn the part

Of envy , basest note of the grand choirs That blend our discQrds with our harmonies ,

De Corona.

Poet—pass onward as thou hast begun ; Filled with the fate prophetic that inspires Heroes as seers ; let thee detraction strike Unfelt , or blame , or hate by thee alike Borne equally , as ills thou might'st not slum . As thine eye fixed upon the orient sun , So be thou watchful still in its decline I

Conscious that disciplined effort due was thine Ere won the goal of truth , and leaves that claim Their records from man's heart , deriding fame . Thine the staid mind and ever heedful eyes That reverence thyself and human ties ; Thy strengthening spirits be , love , patience , hope , And the miconqtiered will with life to cope ; So choose thy themes , so build thine ardent rhyme , That thou may'st live a Laureate evown'd by time .

The Age Of Conceit.

THE AGE OF CONCEIT .

BY OWEN MEK EDITH . The age is gone o ' er AVhen a man may in all things be all . AVe have more Painters , poets , musicians , and artists , no doubt , Than the great Cinquecento gave birth to ; . but out Of a million of mere dilettanti , when , when AA 111 a new Leonardo arise on our ken 1

He is gone with the age which , begat him . Our own Is too vast and too complex for one man alone To embody its purpose , and hold it shut close In the palm of his hand . There were giants in those Irreclaimable days : but in these days of ours In dividing the work ive distribute the powers . Yet a dwarf on a dead giant ' s . shoulders sees mors Than the 'live iant ' s eyesiht avail'd to explore ;

g g And in life ' s lengthened alphabet what used to be To our sires X Y Z is to us A B C . A Varini is roasted alive for his pains , But a Bacon comes after and picks up his brains . A Bruno is angrily seized by the throttle And hunted about by thy ghost , Aristotle , Till a More or Lavater step into his place , Then the world turns and makes an admiring grimace .

Once the men were so great and so few , they appear , Through a distant Olympian atmosphere , Like vast Caryatids upholding the age , Now the men are so many ancl small , disengage One man from the million to mark him , next moment The crowd sweeps him hurriedly out of your comment ; And since we seek vainly ( to praise in om- songs ) 'Mid our fellows the size ivhich to heroes belongs .

AVe take the whole age for a hero , in want Of a better ; and still , in its favour , descant On the strength and the beauty which , failing to find In any one man , we ascribe to mankind .

Paris Under Napoleon Iii.

PARIS UNDER NAPOLEON III .

BY CIIAHMS MACKAY . PAUIS , the bright , the fair , the libertine , Youthful in beauty , old in wickedness;—Paris , the ancient home of generous men , And now the sink of jobbers , gamblers , knaves;—Ruled by a master hand , whose iron grip Slays disobedience , but forgives all

else—A ice , meanness , ra-ime , degeneracy ancl sloth—Detained tlieni for awhile . The city swarmed AVith swaggering captains and their stunted men , Each with his marshal ' s visionary staff Safe in his knapsack , and with head uplift Saucily in the path ; for had they not AVithin short space strangled , against all law , A Republic ? slain it in the streets

young , And dragged his bleeding body through the mire ; And set an armed Empire in his place . Governed by beat of drum and bayonet thrust—A vulgar , slavish , gross , and carnal thing , AVithout a soul;—unless the bees have souls ? These yield a blind obedience to their chief , And feed aud swaddle it , and make it fat , And toil and moil , until th' appointed hour

AA hen in hot swoop they fall upon the drones , And kill the fluttering fathers of the State ; Or , may be , choose another sovereign To gorge and pamper as they did the last .