W. H. L. BARNES

Happy the man who sin's proverbial wage

Receives on the instalment plan — in age.

For him the bulldog pistol's honest bark

Has naught of terror in its blunt remark.

He looks with calmness on the gleaming steel —

If e'er it touched his heart he did not feel:

Superior hardness turned its point away,

Though urged by fond affinity to stay;

His bloodless veins ignored the futile stroke,

And moral mildew kept the cut in cloak.

Happy the man, I say, to whom the wage

Of sin has been commuted into age.

Yet not quite happy — hark, that horrid cry!—

His cruel mirror wounds him in the eye!