Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

Where we cast off Truth's fetter,

And though you hate me throughly,
You write down "Yours truly"
At the foot of your letter.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Where men singly are honest,

With hearts full of pity,

But upon a committee

Their goodness is "Non est."

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

Where a man must shun wedlock

Unless he have money;

"Twere best taste sin's honey,

Than come to that dead lock.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Religion's own warren,

The religion of parties,

Where the head not the heart is,

But of charity barren.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

So fashionably odd,

That as some dress the right way,

So there's a polite way

Of worshipping God.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Where a host of good people

Have endless fierce "scrimmages"

About a few images,

Or the set of a steeple.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? With follies that never end,

Where a young man from college,

With lots of race-knowledge,

Buys the title of "Reverend.”

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?
Where this Reverend person

Is two churches' claimant ;
England gives food and raiment,
While Rome holds him her son.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?
Where such find extollers

As the best servants God has,
With minds just as broad as
The cloth on their collars!

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Where in the high quarter

Ten thousand throats feel
The rich wine down steal,

While the poor want clean water.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

Where one high-born low man
Sets whole nations fighting,
Because he's been slighting
Some other great no-man.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Full of mystical mazes,

Where our noblest and truest,

Our greatest and fewest,

Must die to earn praises.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? Form-ridden, form-haunted,

No great truth believing,

No real man receiving,

If the small "stamp" be wanted.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?
Than dream-worlds absurder,

Ruled by one great machine,
The monster" Routine,"

Born to rob, cheat, and murder.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

Where Truth gets the least bid;

Where "sham" for "real" passes,

And the longest eared asses
Get fêted and feasted.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? To serfdom e'er keeping,

If Lord Blank, of Blank Castle,

Cut his finger, each vassal

Falls straightway a-weeping.

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours? So painfully funny;

With charities endless,

And with thousands still friendless,

Where goes all the money?

Hast thou ne'er heard what a strange world is ours? So prating of Heaven;

Yet we find it hard labour

To forgive once our neighbour,

Not "seventy times seven."

Hast thou ne'er thought what a strange world is ours?

Where we still go on trading,

For sixpences groping

While the sun is fast sloping,

And the great day is fading.

SINOPE.

'NEATH the still waters of the bay
The Turkish ships low sunken lie,
Rotting, and rusting, since the day
When the false Russian came
With breath of flame,

And swept them, like the morning mist, away!
The broken masts still point towards the sky;
But on the decks

Shell-fish and weeds have fastened, and the slime
Of ocean, and the finger-marks of Time :
A world of wrecks!

Around and over them our boat we steered,
And peered

Into the deep the tranquil, lucid water
Told not the redness of that day of slaughter;
And from those drowned Argosies arose

No cries from foes to foes;

All still-still as the old white fort upon the shore, Built by the Genoese in days of yore.

The more I look upon these scenes of fight,

The more I think of Christ, and his great words;

The more I pray that their enduring might

May fill our hearts, and snap in twain our swords. I sicken of these deeds,

And my heart bleeds

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To think the "glory-flower must ever wave
O'er desolation and the grave-
That o'er the music of these victories

Must swell the widow's cries!