THE QUEEN'S LAST RIDE.

(Written on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral ceremonies
in London.)

HE Queen is taking a drive to-day,

THE

They have hung with purple the carriage-way,

They have dressed with purple the royal track Where the Queen goes forth and never comes back.

Let no man labour as she goes by
On her last appearance to mortal eye,
With heads uncovered let all men wait
For the Queen to pass, in her regal state.

Army and Navy shall lead the way

For that wonderful coach of the Queen's to-day.

Kings and Princes and Lords of the land
Shall ride behind her, a humble band,

And over the city and over the world

Shall the Flags of all Nations be half-mast-furled, For the silent lady of royal birth

Who is riding away from the Courts of earth;

Riding away from the world's unrest

To a mystical goal, on a secret quest.

Tho' in royal splendour she drives through town,
Her robes are simple, she wears no crown:

And yet she wears one, for widowed no more,

She is crowned with the love that has gone before,
And crowned with the love she has left behind
In the hidden depths of each mourner's mind.

Bow low your heads-lift your hearts on highThe Queen in silence is driving by!

I AM.

KNOW not whence I came,

I know not whither I go;

But the fact stands clear that I am here
In this world of pleasure and woe.
And out of the mist and murk

Another truth shines plain

It is my power each day and hour
To add to its joy or its pain.

I know that the earth exists,

It is none of my business why;
I cannot find out what it's all about,
I would but waste time to try.
My life is a brief, brief thing,
I am here for a little space,

And while I stay I would like, if I may,
To brighten and better the place.

The trouble, I think, with us all

Is the lack of a high conceit.

If each man thought he was sent to this spot To make it a bit more sweet,

How soon we could gladden the world,

How easily right all wrong,

If nobody shirked, and each one worked. To help his fellows along.

Cease wondering why you came

Stop looking for faults and flaws. Rise up to-day in your pride and say,

"I am part of the First Great Cause! However full the world,

There is room for an earnest man. It had need of me or I would not be

I am here to strengthen the plan."

WOMAN AND WAR.

WE women teach our little sons how wrong

WR

And how ignoble blows are; school and church

Support our precepts, and inoculate

The growing minds with thoughts of love and peace. "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," we say;

But human beings with immortal souls

Must rise above the methods of a brute,

And walk with reason and with self-control.

And then-dear God! you men, you wise, strong

men,

Our self-announced superiors in brain,

Our peers in judgment, you go forth to war!

You leap at one another, mutilate

And starve and kill your fellow-men, and ask
The world's applause for such heroic deeds.
You boast and strut; and if no song is sung,
No laudatory epic writ in blood,

Telling how many widows you have made,
Why then, perforce, you say our bards are dead
And inspiration sleeps to wake no more.
And we, the women, we whose lives you are—

What can we do but sit in silent homes,
And wait and suffer? Not for us the blare