Auld Lang Syne

SHADOWS

Shadow gives to sunshine brightness,
And it gives to joy its lightness;
Shadow gives to honour meekness,
And imparts its strength to weakness;
Shadow deepens human kindness,
Draws the veil from mental blindness;
Shadow sweetens love’s own sweetness,
And gives to life its deep intenseness;
Shadow is earth’s sacredness,
And the heaven’s loveliness;
Shadow is day’s tenderness,
And the night’s calm holiness;
Shadow’s deepest night of darkness
Will break in day’s eternal brightness.

SHADOWS

In the band of noble workers,
Seems no place for such as I —
They have faith, where I have yearning,
They can speak where I but sigh,
They can point the way distinctly
Where for me the shadows lie.

Lofty purpose, strong endeavour,
These are not ordain’d for me —
Wayside flower might strive for ever,
Never could it grow a tree —
Yet a child may laugh to gather,
Or a sick man smile to see.

So I too in God’s creation
Have my own peculiar part,
He must have some purpose surely
For weak hand and timid heart,
Transient joys for my diffusing,
For my healing transient smart.

Just to fling a moment’s brightness
Over dreary down-trod ways,
Just to fan a better impulse
By a full and ready praise —
Pitying where I may not succour,
Loving where I cannot raise.

ORGAN-BOYS.

A LEGEND OF LONDON.

By Thomas Ingoldsby, Minor

In days – not old – a Demon lived,
And a terrible Fiend was he,
For he ground and he ground
All London around,
A huge barrel-organ of hideous sound,
Incessantly!
From morning’s light
Till the deep midnight,
In all sorts of streets and all sorts of squares.
Up the cul-de-sacs– down the thoroughfares,
Where Thames rolls his waters from Greenwich to Kew,
Not a lane could you find that he didn’t go through.
You heard him at all times when most unaware,
In quiet back-parlours up five flights of stair;
When you ate, when you drank, when you read morning prayer,
Or sat dozing awhile in an easy armchair,
Or read a new novel – or talk’d to a friend,
Or endeavour’d to settle accounts without end,
Or when grief (or champagne), caused an ache in your head,
Or you promised yourself to lie latish in bed,
It was all the same
That Demon came,
Grind! grind!
Peace there was none,
Under the sun;
That odious organ never had done.
Sick, sad, or sorry,
No end to the worry.
No sort of grief
Brought the slightest relief;
You might send out to say you were dying or dead,
The organ ground on as if nothing were said!
Grind! grind!
Till you lost your mind.
No use to scold, or draw down the blind,
The fiend only ground more loud and more fast,
Till you had to give him a shilling at last.
So that having tormented you madly that day,
He would surely next morning come round the same way,
And grind and grind – till in frenzy of pain,
You should bribe him once more – just to come back again!

Know ye, my friends, who this Fiend may be?
Here is the key to the mystery —
It is Tubal Cain! who – the Bible says —
Invented organs in very old days,