An arm of aid to the weak,
A friendly hand to the friendless,
Kind words, so short to speak,

But whose echo is endless:

The world is wide,-these things are small, They may be nothing, but they are All.

The moment we think we have learnt
The lore of the all-wise One,

By which we could stand unburnt,
On the ridge of the seething sun:
The moment we grasp at the clue,
Long-lost and strangely riven,
Which guides our soul to the True,
And the Poet to Heaven.

The world is wide,-these things are small,-
If they be nothing, what is there at all?

HALF-TRUTH

The words that trembled on your lips
Were uttered not-I know it well;
The tears that would your eyes eclipse
Were checked and smothered, e'er they fell:
The looks and smiles I gained from you
Were little more than others won,

And yet you are not wholly true,

Nor wholly just what you have done.

You know, at least you might have known,
That every little grace you gave,-
Your voice's somewhat lowered tone,-
Your hand's faint shake or parting wave,-
Your every sympathetic look

At words that chanced your soul to touch
While reading from some favourite book,
Were much to me-alas, how much!

You might have seen-perhaps you saw-
How all of these were steps of hope

On which I rose, in joy and awe,
Up to my passion's lofty scope:
How after each, a firmer tread
I planted on the slippery ground,
And higher raised my venturous head,
And ever new assurance found.

May be, without a further thought,
It only pleased you thus to please,
And thus to kindly feelings wrought
You measured not the sweet degrees;
Yet, though you hardly understood
Where I was following at your call,
You might I dare to say you should-
Have thought how far I had to fall.

And thus when fallen, faint, and bruised,
I see another's glad success,
I may have wrongfully accused
Your heart of vulgar fickleness:
But even now, in calm review
Of all I lost and all I won,

I cannot deem you wholly true,

Nor wholly just what you have done.

SHADOWS

They seemed to those who saw them meet
The casual friends of every day,

Her smile was undisturbed and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.

But yet if one the other's name

In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart, you thought so calm and tame,
Would struggle like a captured bird:

And letters of mere formal phrase
Were blistered with repeated tears,-
And this was not the work of days,

But had gone on for years and years!

(1840.)

Alas! that Love was not too strong
For maiden shame and manly pride!
Alas! that they delayed so long

The goal of mutual bliss beside.

Yet what no chance could then reveal,
And neither would be first to own,
Let fate and courage now conceal,
When truth could bring remorse alone.

MRS. DENISON 1

'Tis right for her to sleep between
Some of those old Cathedral-walls,
And right too that her grave is green
With all the dew and rain that falls.

'Tis well the organ's solemn sighs

Should soar and sink around her rest,

And almost in her ear should rise

The prayers of those she loved the best.

'Tis also well this air is stirred

By Nature's voices loud and low,
By thunder and the chirping bird,
And grasses whispering as they grow.

For all her spirit's earthly course
Was as a lesson and a sign
How to o'errule the hard divorce

That parts things natural and divine.

Undaunted by the clouds of fear,

Undazzled by a happy day,

She made a Heaven about her here,

And took, how much! with her away.

1 Mrs. Denison was the first wife of the Bishop of Salisbury, and is buried in a grassy space enclosed by the cloisters of that cathedral.

THE BROWNIE

A gentle household Spirit, unchallenged and unpaid,
Attended with his service a lonely servant-maid.

She seemed a weary woman, who had found life unkind,
Whose youth had left her early and little left behind.

Most desolate and dreary her days went on until
Arose this unseen stranger her labours to fulfil.

But now she walked at leisure, secure of blame she slept,
The meal was always ready, the room was always swept.

And by the cheerful firelight, the winter evenings long,

He gave her words of kindness and snatches of sweet song;

With useful housewife secret and tales of faeries fair,

From times when gaunt magicians and dwarfs and giants were;

Thus, habit closing round her, by slow degrees she nurst
A sense of trust and pleasure, where she had feared at first.

When strange desire came on her, and shook her like a storm,
To see this faithful being distinct in outward form.

He was so pure a nature, of so benign a will,
It could be nothing fearful, it could be nothing ill.

At first with grave denial her prayer he laid aside,
Then warning and entreaty, but all in vain, he tried.

The wish upgrew to passion,-she urged him more and more,Until, as one out wearied, but still lamenting sore,

He promised in her chamber he would attend her call,

When from the small high window the full-moon light should fall.

Most proud and glad that evening she entered to behold
How there her phantom Lover his presence would unfold;

When, lo! in bloody pallor lay, on the moonlit floor,

The Babe she bore and murdered some thirteen years before.

ALEXANDER SMITH

[BORN at Kilmarnock, December 31, 1829. For many years a patterndesigner and afterwards a journalist, he obtained the secretaryship to Edinburgh University at the age of twenty-five, and held the post until his death on November 20, 1866. His published books of poems were A Life Drama and other Poems, 1852; Sonnets on the War (in conjunction with Sidney Dobell), 1855; City Poems, 1857; Edwin of Deira, 1861. He also wrote and published prose, his book of essays, Dreamthorp, being the work by which he is most widely known.]

Into a not very voluminous body of work, Alexander Smith managed to pack almost every known poetic vice and some that must surely have waited for him to discover. If extremes of badness alone could exclude a poet from consideration, Smith would have found no place in a collection such as this; he would, indeed, not have been even a name. His work is wild with an almost constant confusion of hysteria with passion; every story he tells, and narrative was his favourite medium, is destroyed by an entirely erratic psychologic sense; he drops easily from the most hectic manner to such flatness as

"My heart is in the grave with her,

The family went abroad;"

his imagery can achieve a falsity which is almost revolting, as in"As holds the wretched west the sunset's corpse;"

and he writes habitually as though poetry should be a dissipation instead of a discipline. And yet, in spite of such cardinal and withering defects, which cannot but be allowed by the least susceptible judgment, it is impossible to leave a reading of Smith's collected poems without a friendly feeling for the poet, and a willing concession that, however sadly they are obscured, here are qualities of an admirable kind: qualities indeed that are as rare as poetry itself.

His defects are unfortunately of such a kind as to make it extremely difficult to give him any very gallant show by quotation, since he never flies clear of his bad habits for more than a few lines