THE DEAD MAN

* It was written with red and black ink, and much of it he could not understand; but he put his finger on a line and spelled it through. At once the room was darkened, and the house trembled. OLD FAIRY TALE.

TIME like a sullen school-boy stands
Beside the Wizard's knee,
The book of life between his hands,
And spells out painfully
The crabbed Christ-cross row,
The Alpha and the O.

His grimy fingers slowly trace
Each odd, repellent sign
In a dull fear to lose the place;
His voice, with listless whine,
Drawls through the scheduled hour
The syllables of power.

While Zeta is so like to Xi
Small thought has he to spare
For what the screed may signify,
(The Wizard in His chair
Smiles, knowing ere He look
All that is in the book).

But sometimes ill and sometimes well,
Reluctant and perplexed,
He gropes and stammers through the spell
From one sound to the next;
And when the last is read
God's Word wakes the dead.

ONE that had sinned against the light
Lay self-murdered under night.
There came three men and walked thereby,
And at the cross-roads saw him lie.
Said the first: "I say that this is sin,
And none may answer for him therein."

The second: "Nay, we should have seen to this; His blood as the blood of Abel is."

The third: "It is but the common case,
The weak thing beaten in the race."

Said the second: "At length he has fall'n on sleep;" "Now," said the first, "shall he learn to weep;"

But the third said: "If he should live again 'Twill be but as mist or a drop of the rain."

Said the third: "Well, well! let the body rest; If soul there be, be it banned or blest."