WORLDLY PLACE.

VEN in a palace, life may be led well !
So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius.-But the stifling den.

Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken,
Who rates us, if we peer outside our pen-
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,

I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here! The aids to noble life are all within."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH

THE KID.

E saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!
So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side
Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried :
"Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,

Who sins, once wash'd by the baptismal wave!"
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sigh'd,
The infant Church! of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.

And then she smil'd; and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid

Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew-
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

EAST LONDON.

WAS August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal
Green,

And the pale weaver, through his window

seen

In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited;

I met a preacher there I knew, and said: "Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?' "Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."

O human soul! as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

THE BETTER PART.

ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare !

66

'Christ," some one says, was human as we

are.

No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to

scan.

We live no more, when we have done our span."

"Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest,

care?

"who can

From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear? Live we like brutes our life without a plan!"

So answerest thou; but why not rather say:
"Hath man no second life?-Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?—

More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us ?—Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as He!"

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

IMMORTALITY.

OIL'D by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say,

The world shall be thrust down, and we
up-borne !

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they,
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day,
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?

No, no! the energy of life may be

Kept on after the grave, but not begun!
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,

From strength to strength advancing—only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.