,--my king got his crown,
And made his whole business to break other folks's.

I might as well join in the safe old _tum_, _tum_:
A hero's an excellent loadstar,--but, bless ye,
What infinite odds 'twixt a hero to come
And your only too palpable hero _in esse_!
Precisely the odds (such examples are rife)
'Twixt the poem conceived and the rhyme we make show of,
'Twixt the boy's morning dream and the wake-up of life,
'Twixt the Blondel God meant and a Blondel I know of!

But the world's better off, I'm convinced of it now,
Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny,
To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow,
And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many;
And somehow the poor old Earth blunders along,
Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness,
And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong,
Gets to port, as the next generation will witness.

You think her old ribs have come all crashing through,
If a whisk of Fate's broom snap your cobweb asunder;
But her rivets were clinched by a wiser than you,
And our sins cannot push the Lord's right hand from under.
Better one honest man who can wait for God's mind,
In our poor shifting scene here, though heroes were plenty!
Better one bite, at forty, of truth's bitter rind
Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!

I see it all now: when I wanted a king,
'Twas the kingship that failed in myself I was seeking,--
'Tis so much less easy to do than to sing,
So much simpler to reign by a proxy than _be_ king!
Yes, I think I _do_ see: after all's said and sung,
Take this one rule of life and you never will rue it,--
'Tis but do your own duty and hold your own tongue,
And Blondel were royal himself, if he knew it!

* * * * *

NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I
resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another
side of Nature. I have done so.

According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites,
"wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon." My
journal for the last year or two has been _selenitic_ in this sense.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not
tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores o