POETRY.

WOUNDED.

HERE day by day and night by night

Pinned to the self-same bed I lie, While one by one in furtive flight The hooded weeks steal quickly by.

Somewhere o'er the uncounted dead

The guns, I know, toll out the day, And every hour the spirting lead

Flicks the bright souls of men away.

But here life's simple, woven all Of morning light and evening gloom, The lawn and the dark hospital

And always this three-windowed room.

And often friends come pitying me,

That, wounded, I should be shut out From misty moor and tossing sea,

And winds that sweep the world about.

Pity me not. Life's simple. Yes,

But this small world, intensely known, Takes on a magic loveliness,

Like wind that comes, like wind that's flown.

For as I lie, struck down and lame, My spirit quickens suddenly ; Red lilies by me seem to flame A challenge to the grizzled sky.

And, as night falls across the lawn, Across the bridge, each glowing lamp Seems distant, league on league withdrawn, The watch-fire of no mortal camp.

And pigeons, circling round the trees, And wheeling downward to my bed, Shine silver in the morning breeze Like souls of the light-hearted dead.

S. G. TALLER,.