Truths take live forms that make a hope for labour, Though rare, When life seems sweeter with each bright hope’s neighbour―― Dreams fair. Progress had not been crushed nor lost its spell For men, Had Rousseau never found the tyrant’s knell, His pen. Had Gladstone’s self ne’er poured the words that burn For token, The voice of Right for myriads who earn Had spoken. And yet these truths which show to us immortal To-day, When swart Injustice sees through its last portal Decay; The joy these truths can give to heart and soul, And pour Glory on prophets gone who filled the roll Of yore; Truths, gifts, and hopes that make our life’s hard track Worth living―― What were they did no voices thunder back Thanksgiving? Mere thoughts, mere hopes, mere dreams, mere visions showing No form; The statesman gives their shape in language glowing Heart-warm. In deathless speech their life is found, their power Is seen, Else were their names the shadows of an hour That’s been. Mere theories rise, fall, and fade, though all May cherish. The fact endures, free speech forbids its fall To perish. In champions’ tongues has truth its full progression: Bare thought Dawns, shines, and fades, through finding no expression, Though sought. But speech and Press are mightier than all sway Can bind, Made potent by wide utterance their way To find. Progress and Freedom, though Time’s tide that rolls Wax hoary, Give to a nation’s life, both mind’s and soul’s, Its glory. A. PRATT. ――――:o:―――― LOFTY LINES. (_By a Swinburnean Lofty Liner._) Imparadised by my environment, In rhymes impeccably good, Let me scribble, as poor proud Byron meant To have scribbled, if he could! I’ll strain, as the sinuous cameleopard Strains after the blossomy bough, And with faculties that develop hard Let me write――I can’t say how. Impish idiom’s idiosyncrasy Shall my verse festoon with flowers; In a kingdom of pen-and-inkrasy I shall wield prosodian powers. Through innumerous apotheoses The future my name shall learn, And like passionate plethoric peonies My perpetual poems burn. Let my glory grow as the icicle Accrues between night and morn; As the bicyclist rides his bicycle Let me on my metre be borne. Flashing thus on verses vehicular, With Pegasus ’neath my touch, My method can’t be too particular, Nor the public see too much.