POETRY.
The bitter Northwind racks the street, The night is fallen with the hush Of falling snow and muffled feet.
Well fed, well clothed, in furs and wraps, 'We pick our way, and hug the wall, With heads bent low, if so perhaps The storm may lighter on us fall.
Behind the gauze of drifting snow, Horses and men and oxen steam, 'The lurching coaches past us go, With wheels as silent as a dream.
As in a dream, the spectres rise Of blinded kings and shattered creeds, And still through all the centuries
The open wound of Christendom bleeds.
A dream, a nightmare. Ah, what eights, What wizard tales these stones enshrine, - What weltering depths, what perilous heights, These atones of ruined Constantine 1 We start: a beggar by us stands, Huddled against a broken door. Be stretches out his greedy hands, " Honour the Saviour in His poor. " ' 1'is not by bread alone men live,'!
He whines his lesson, thus and thus; We give an alms. Maybe we give Obols to Belisarius.
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