But o'er its roof is raised no cross,
No vesper bell is rung,

And the cooper binds his barrels
There where the Mass was sung.

No burning lamps shed crimson gleams
Where the marble altars glowed,

For the wine vats climb the pillared heights
Where the tall white saints abode.

In the hush of the silent twilight,
As the moon begins to rise,
Think how the glory fades away

With the warm clouds in the skies.

How the world grows gray in its ceaseless course,
And the stately fanes of old

Are crumbling away into nothingness,

As the end of a tale that is told.

Though the one may escape the ruthless hand
That shatters the altar stones,

Yet the grass grows green in the other's aisle
And 'tis only the night-wind moans.

J. D. ERRINGTON-LOVELAND.

THE

WORSHIP

I.

OF THE BIRDS.

THE Nightingale sits on a twig to sing;
On an eminent separate perch;

And the other birds sit round in a ring,
As persons do at Church.

And a wonderful song sings the small brown bird,

Till the down of the feathers parts

On the breasts of the congregation, stirred
By the beating of their hearts.

The little ones dream of their nursery nest,
And warmth of their mother's wing;

And the youth, of the friend whom each loves best,
And of courting in early Spring.

And the mothers dream of their callow young;

And softly coo, like a dove ;

But, of every song that preacher sung,

The beginning and end was LOVE.

II.

Under a spreading fir-tree's shade,

Where grass was never green,
On a lure of whistle and water played
A man in velveteen.

And a magical music spread among
The birds, as they hovered round,
Like butterflies on a lamp, and hang

On the sermon of empty sound.

And the little ones dreamed of their scrambles for food,
And the youth, of their rivals in May;

And the mothers, of punishments due to their brood,
And of cats, and birds of prey.

Frightened, but fascinated still

They could not but hover aboveThe song had a weird, bewildering trill, But never a word of LOVE!

F, Dunster, Printer and Publisher, Lyme Regis.

J. W. M.