FRANCIS R. C. HOPKINS.

[Of Errowanbang, Carcoar, New South Wales, author of the following plays :-All for Gold, Good for Evil, Only a Fool, Russia as it is, £. S. D., all of which have been put on the stage.]

TO A LITTle friend.

THE ships that meet upon a world-wide waste
Of waters in a peaceful summer calm,

And hail each other with a heart-felt joy,

May part, to meet no more.

At eventide

The night-clouds gather, and the storm-wind shakes
Them far asunder, on their watery way.

So we, indeed, may never meet again,

Until the shelt'ring haven's reached at last.

But sometimes in your happy thoughts perchance
A memory of the bygone trails may come

And steal some faint remembrance from your brain.
May gladsome youth, that riches cannot buy,
Linger with joyous footsteps in your way,

And keep you in God's sunshine crowned with flowers!
May all as sweet and fair as you ne'er know
The marks of sorrow's rude unkindly hand,
While love and joy like guiding stars shine bright
Beyond the friendships of a callous time.
Ah! pure and bright as sparkling mountain-dew,
Unsullied by a world of care and pain,
Unspoiled by stage tricks of a social art,
The great world's flattery or its empty praises,
You seem the shadow of a summer dream,
And waft one back to better, happier hours,
When we, like you, were children, gathering fair
Sweet blossoms in the happy summer fields,
With care unheeded, and the past forgot.

Here, in the midst of flocks and herds alone,
With constant round of busy active life,
Romance of ev'ry kind or shape stamped out,
One's nature's dull and commonplace as lead.
That matters little if you only say,

With this poor paper in your dainty hands,
"Twas time alone, and age, that could efface
The words here written by a kindly friend,
Whose work perchance has ceased for evermore."

RICHARD HENRY [HENGIST] HORNE

[The Colonial career of this distinguished English poet is briefly told. In 1852 he went to Victoria, and was appointed to take charge of the Gold Escort between Ballarat and Melbourne; subsequently he held the office of Warden of the Blue Mountains. It was in this latter place, which he describes as "this Blue Mountain of dark forests, rains, and hurricanes," that he composed his Prometheus the Fire-bringer. He wrote occasional verses in Victoria, and a cantata, The South Sea Sisters. But he will be remembered in Australia chiefly for the influence he exercised in moulding the poetic fancies of Kendall and the then rising school of Australian poets-vide a sketch in the London Academy, March 29, 1884, entitled "Orion' Horne in Melbourne," by Mr. Patchett Martin. R. H. Horne returned to England in 1869. He was born in 1803, and after a long and adventurous life-his youth had been spent in the Mexican navy-he died so recently as 1884 at Margate.]

ORION.

BOOK THIRD, CANTO THE FIRST.

THERE is an age of action in the world;
An age of thought; lastly, an age of both,

When thought guides action and men know themselves
What they would have, and how to compass it.

Yet are not these great periods so distinct

Each from the other, or from all the rest
Of intermediate degrees and powers,

Cut off, but that strong links of nature run
Throughout, and prove one central heart, wherein
Time beats twin-pulses with Humanity.
In every age an emblem and a type,
Premature, single, ending with itself,
Of loftier being in an after-time,
May germinate, develop, radiate,

And, like a star, go out, and leave no mark
Save a high memory. One such is our theme.

The wisdom of mankind creeps slowly on,
Subject to every doubt that can retard,
Or fling it back upon an earlier time;
So timid are man's footsteps in the dark,
But blindest those who have no inward light,
One mind, perchance, in every age contains
The sum of all before, and much to come;
Much that's far distant still; but that full mind,
Companioned oft by others of like scope,
Belief, and tendency, and anxious will,
A circle small transpierces and illumes:
Expanding, soon its subtle radiance

Falls blunted from the mass of flesh and bone.
The man who for his race might supersede
The work of ages dies, worn out—not used,
And in his track disciples onward strive,
Some hairs'-breadths only from his starting-point:
Yet lives he not in vain; for if his soul
Hath entered others, though imperfectly,
The circle widens as the world spins round,-
His soul works on while he sleeps 'neath the grass.
So, let the firm Philosopher renew

His wasted lamp-the lamp wastes not in vain,
Though he no mirrors for its rays may see,

Nor trace them through the darkness;-let the Hand
Which feels primeval impulses direct

A forthright plough, and make his furrow broad,
With heart untiring, while one field remains;
So, let the herald Poet shed his thoughts,
Like seeds that seem but lost upon the wind.
Work in the night, thou sage, while Mammon's brain
Teems with low visions on his couch of down ;—
Break, thou, the clods while high-throned Vanity,
'Midst glaring lights and trumpets, holds its courts ;-
Sing, thou, thy song amidst the stoning crowd,
Then stand apart, obscure to man, with God.
The Poet of the future knows his place,
Though in the present shady be his seat,
And all his laurels deepening but the shade.
But what is yonder vague and uncouth shape,
That like a burthened giant bending moves,
With outspread arms groping its upward way
Along a misty hill? In the blear shades,
Sad twilight, and thick dews darkening the paths
Whereon the slow dawn hath not yet advanced
A chilly foot, nor tinged the colourless air-
The labouring figure fades as it ascends.

'Twas he, the giant builder-up of things,
And of himself, now blind; the worker great,
Who sees no more the substance near his hands,
Nor in them, nor the objects that his mind
Desires and would embody. All is dark.
It is Orion now bereft of sight,

Whose eyes aspired to luminous designs.
The sun, the moon, the stars are blotted out
With their familiar glories, which become

Henceforth like chronicles remote. The Earth
Forbids him to cleave deep and trace her roots,
And veins, and quarries: whose wide purposes
Are narrowed now into the safest path:

Whose lofty visions are all packed in his brain,
As though the heavens no further could unfold
Their wonders, but turned inward on themselves;
Like a bright flower that closes in the night
For the last time, and dreams of bygone suns
Ne'er to be clasped again: thou art reduced
To ask for sympathy and to need help;
Stooping to pluck up pity from all soils-
Bitterest of roots that round Pride's temple grow,—
Losing self-centred power, and in its place
Pressed with humiliation almost down:
Whose soul had in one passion been absorbed,

Which, though illimitable in itself,

Profound and primal, yet had wrapped him round
Beyond advance, or further use of hand,
Purpose and service to the needy Earth:
Whose passion, being less than his true scope,
Had lowered his life and quelled aspiring dreams,
But that it led to blindness and distress,
Self-pride's abasement, more extensive truth,
A lighter consciousness and efforts new.

In that dark hour when anguished he awoke,
Orion from the sea-shore made his way,
Feeling from cliff to cliff, from tree to tree,
Guided by knowledge of the varied tracks

Of land, the rocks, the mounds of fern, the grass,
That 'neath his feet made known each spot he passed,
Hill, vale, and woodland; till he reached the caves,
Once his rude happy dwelling. All was silent.
Rhexergon and Biastor were abroad,