Best at the last, he knows not death; And when the chase is o'er, Changes the simple name of "Faith" To "Joy for evermore." THE RACER. While to the racer swift and strong, Inexorable fate Assigns the weight, the spur, the thong, The choking struggle sharp and long, The owner wins the plate. Falls to the hind rasped down by toil, And prematurely old, The scanty dole his only spoil From lifelong battle with the soil, The master wins the gold. Now comes a crying through the air, The peasant's righteous call; Lords of the land in liberal care Earth's profit with the workers share, And we'll be winners all. THE SYBARITES. Valour, not ornament, Wins the life tournament. The silken Sybarites, we know, In their superfluous elegance, To measured music, swift or slow, Had trained their battle steeds to dance. 'Twas thus they fell before the flutes Of that sagacious Spartan crew, For with the caracoling brutes What could such dainty riders do? O tutors! nerve your pupils' hearts With energy for strenuous deeds, Or all your sciences and arts May prove but Sybaritic steeds. [Illustration] FRANCIS PERRIER THE ENGRAVER. With our needs change our deeds. That coinless youth who left his home Was wealthy in an ardent soul, For, failing other ways to Rome, He led the blind and shared his dole. But when the guidance reached its end, The sacred seat of art and fame, His skilful burin stood his friend, And won him competence and name. He leads no more the poor and blind, His walk in life is altered quite; The rich he guides to art refined, And caters for the keenest sight. ROME. Three symbols in one sketch combine The charms, O Rome, we find in thee, The dome, the monument, the pine, Nature, and Art, and Memory. THEODORIC. "Conscience makes cowards of us all." A tale grotesque in old-world story read Of conscience in its dread fantastic force, Tells at a banquet how a fish's head Wrought in the tyrant an insane remorse. For great Theodoric with blood imbrued, Blood of the guiltless, was to death struck down, When in the dull-eyed sturgeon's face he viewed Stark murdered Symmachus' avenging frown. SOCIAL LIFE A PICNIC. By many an image, saint and sage Have figured human life; A mart, a maze, a pilgrimage, A race, a battle strife. And many another he might phrase Who studies as they pass The human emmet's social ways, Through observation's glass. So in my emblem I compare Life to that summer feast Where every guest supplies a share, The greatest and the least, In this wide hall which God hath built And hung with landscapes round, Whose belted dome at night is gilt With stars on azure ground.