Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exiguum. -Cicero, ad Att. xii. 18.

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweer purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burthen of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude
Divinely human, raising worship so

To higher reverence more mixed with love-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever.

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world.

1867.

SIR ALFRED LYALL

[BORN 1835, of a family distinguished for its Indian services; educated at Eton and Haileybury; entered the Indian Civil Service, 1856; went through the Mutiny; rose rapidly, becoming ultimately Home Secretary 1873, Foreign Secretary 1878. Retired 1887, and lived in London till his death in 1911. Was Member of the India Council 1888-1902, and very prominent in intellectual society. Published Verses written in India, 1889, and afterwards two volumes of Asiatic Studies, dealing mainly with Oriental ideas on philosophy and religion.]

Though Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall's chief claim to remembrance, other than the deep impression that he has left in the minds of his many friends, lies in his brilliant Indian administration and his masterly essays on Eastern religions, his little volume of verse ought by no means to be forgotten. It stands alone by reason of its vivid expression of Indian thought, old and new, and of its deep insight into Indian character. In form, too, the poems are admirable, though some of those written between 1864 and 1870 are a little too Swinburnian in rhythm and some of the rhymes are such as to shock the critical ear. The two poems given below are alike concerned with that problem of the ultimate meaning of the world of Life, Death and Destiny-on which Lyall's own mind, like that of his Indian mystics, was ever working. But, did space permit, it would be easy to show that he carried his researches and his meditations on this and kindred themes through other lands and other literatures. In Joab Speaketh we realize the doubts as to the justice of things which must have beset many a Hebrew warrior; in the charming story of The Monk and the Bird we have a mediæval assertion of faith rewarded; while in Pilate's Wife's Dream the poet gives us a picture of the longing of a Roman woman to be saved from "madness and magic," and to be free, once and for all, from the deep, perplexing, insoluble problems that were for ever vexing the soul of the East.

EDITOR.

THEOLOGY IN EXTREMIS:

Or a soliloquy that may have been delivered in India,
June, 1857

"They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism, by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself in that way."— Extract from an Indian news paper.

MORITURUS LOQUITUR

Oft in the pleasant summer years,
Reading the tales of days bygone,

I have mused on the story of human tears,
All that man unto man has done,
Massacre, torture, and black despair;
Reading it all in my easy-chair.

Passionate prayer for a minute's life;
Tortured crying for death as rest;
Husband pleading for child or wife,

Pitiless stroke upon tender breast.
Was it all real as that I lay there
Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?

Could I believe in those hard old times,
Here in this safe luxurious age?

Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,
Or truly is man so fierce in his rage?
What could I suffer, and what could I dare?
I, who was bred to that easy-chair.

They were my fathers, the men of yore,
Little they recked of a cruel death;
They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore,
They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.
What would I burn for, and whom not spare?
I, who had faith in an easy-chair.

Now do I see old tales are true,

Here in the clutch of a savage foe;

Now shall I know what my fathers knew,
Bodily anguish and bitter woe,
Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare,
Far from my civilized easy-chair.

Now have I tasted and understood

That old world feeling of mortal hate; For the eyes all round us are hot with blood; They will kill us coolly-they do but wait; While I, I would sell ten lives, at least, For one fair stroke at that devilish priest

Just in return for the kick he gave,

Bidding me call on the prophet's name; Even a dog by this may save

Skin from the knife and soul from the flame; My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it;

But life is sweet if a word may earn it.

A bullock's death, and at thirty years!
Just one phrase, and a man gets off it;
Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears

Whining aloud the name of the prophet;
Only a formula easy to patter,
And, God Almighty, what can it matter?

"Matter enough," will my comrade say
Praying aloud here close at my side,
"Whether you mourn in despair alway,
Cursed for ever by Christ denied;
Or whether you suffer a minute's pain
All the reward of Heaven to gain."

Not for a moment faltereth he,

Sure of the promise and pardon of sin;

Thus did the martyrs die, I see,

Little to lose and muckle to win;

Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it,
But what shall I do if I don't believe it?