POETRY.
TO A GRANDCHILD—AGED ONE WEEK.
Aa, Dearest, you were bold and wise, Brave father's braver daughter, You dared to face a world grown old In fire and storm and slaughter.
You might have feared or, fearing not, You well might have disdained To leave your meads of amaranth bloom For fields so bruised and stained.
Your choice was nobler. When our lands Were cursed with blight and pain, And the grim Shape, the Felon Death, Had bound man with his chain, You, like the King* in that proud tale, Made woe and blood your goal.
" Where most they suffer, most they need," Cried the awakened soul.
Child of the Light, the day that dawns With clouds of thunderous hue Shall see the bright, victorious sun Shine in the cloudless blue.
The old world withers. Those dear eyes Grown conscious and serene,
Shall gaze on a transfigured sphere, An ampler, nobler scene,
Where men, with clearer aims and hopes, And stronger thoughts than ours, Will build new mansions of the mind, Scale Heaven with their towers.
You give the anguish-stricken earth
Your message of the True : You are the herald of God's Peace,
We are reborn in you.
IGNOTVB.
• The father of the present King of Italy was warned during a severe outbreak of cholera that Naples was the most dangerous place in his whole kingdom. " Then that is where I must go," was his reply.
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