With  the  balm  of  a  smooth-rhyming

leaf;
He  will  drop  for  his  Hilda  a  tear,
And  gloat  o'er  his  verse  for  a  year.
Now  I  think  of  it,  somebody  said.
That  the  crash  had  come  some  time  ago;
She  had  either  gone  off,  or  was  dead,
And  a  poem  from  that  was  to  grow,
Which  was  certain  to  touch  every  heart
With  its  feeling  of  fine  tragic  Art.
192


Hilda  among  the  Broken  Gods


If  I  had  not  that  paper  to  write
On  the  dawning  of  mind  in  Molluscs,
And  that  other  to  set  people  right
On  the  subject  of  Molars  and  Tusks,
I  think,  I  would  like  just  to  see
What  he  says  about  Hilda  and  me.
BOOK  FOURTH

LUKE    SPROTT,
EVANGELIST

Evangelist  and  village  smith,'  a  man

of  good  report.
And  cunning  among  cattle,  known  to

all  the  country  near,
Luke  could  make   the  bellows  snore,

and  also  painfully  exhort.
And  feared  the  Lord,  and  had  a  new

religion  once  a  year.
He  had  been  a  Chartist  leader  in  his

hot  and  hopeful  youth.
Talking  gunpowder  and  bayonets  about

the  rights  of  man,
Until    he    got    converted,    when    he

preached  about  the  Truth,
The  Blood  and    the  Atonement,  the

Covenant  and  Plan.
Tired  of  his  parish  kirk,  he  tried  tlie

Baptists  for  a  season,
Tired  of  them,  and  turned  a  Methodist,

recanting  all  the  past.
Tired  again,  and  took  to  shady  faiths

that  shun  the  ways  of  reason  ;
And   every   change,   he   vowed,   had

brought  the  peace  of  God  at  last.
And  every  change  had  left  a  stratum

of  belief  on  him.
With  fossils  here  of  Presbytery,  there

of  his  Baptist  time.
Then   traces    of  the    Methodist,   and

now  the  footprints  dim
Of  creatures  that  had  sprawled  across

the  later  mud  and  slime.
