It's striking nineteen! I must send for my man,
And hasten my dressing, and hail a sedan;
I'm off! at the door of my hostess to knock
At exactly five minutes to twenty o'clock.
Promotion by Merit.
Where kin or friendship gives a lien
Surpassing merit is detected;
Which, teste Darwin, comes to mean
Extinction of the unselected.
On a Station in Lower Bengal.
Our church as at present it stands
Has no congregation, nor steeple;
The lands are all low-lying lands
And the people are low lying people.
The Successful Competitor—1873.
Oh palmy days of old! Oh glorious past!
Long years have circled since I sang thee last;
Long years of exile on an alien soil,
Where weeks of fever temper months of toil;
And still I mourn the land, to woes a prey,
Where tape accumulates, and men decay.
I mourn the rule the Magistrate of yore,
A fostering despot o'er his people bore;
He reigned supreme within his little State,
His smile shed honour, and his frown was fate.
Prompt with the rifle, niggard of the pen,
By manly deeds he won the hearts of men;
His watchful eye each rival chieftain viewed,
And oftener calmed than curbed the rising feud.
He knew the intense devotion that reveres
Each usage hallowed by a thousand years;
