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SAINT JOSEPH.

With the Spring in verdure dressed,
Father, came your mild request.*
I, a 'prentice of the Muse,

All unskilled, cannot refuse.

O sing the praise of Mary's Spouse
And of that Galilean house,
White-walled, vine-garlanded,
Angel-encompasséd,

Might well a seraph's powers employ;
But as the shepherd-boy

To ease his spirit plies an oaten reed,

While, moving slow, the cropping wethers feed,
So I in rude untutored verse

Saint Joseph's worth rehearse.

And first, the Saint's thrice-holy dread

The spotless Maid to wed.

She of our tainted race

The one sole Miracle of Grace,

Predestined for the Spirit's Bride,

He thought to put aside.

And at th' angelic word

The Saint's strong faith, as did the Prophet's gourd,

Sprang vigorous in the night;

But no fierce sun by day could smite

Its spreading canopy.

One glorious burst of song,

Prophetic, strong,

Then silence golden as the pause between

Celestial melodies from choirs unseen,

Such was our Lady's legacy;

But he

With never a word

The deeper silence stirred,

Pleased to play subject to so sweet a queen.

See the preface to "Saint Joseph's Anthology," by the Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J.

Engulphed in the white splendour,
At once so strong and tender,
Of his moon-sandaled Mate,*
What wonder that his high estate
Was dimly seen by mortal eyes!

For God is swift to teach, but man is slow to learn,
And the great truths we recognize

It took the race long centuries to discern.

Dear Foster-Saint!

Thy earthly home knew little of earth's taint.
Though poor, it held earth's choicest treasures-
None other

Than sinless Babe and sinless Mother.

Patron of home and all its chastened pleasures!

THE very full and elaborate account of Virgil in Dr. William Smith's large Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology might very well have included the anecdote which the above title will recall to many readers, even although the anecdote should in the same breath be pronounced utterly apocryphal. The anecdote tells us that before the feast-day of the Emperor Augustus it rained all the night, and that this rainy night was succeeded by a sunny day which allowed the feast to be celebrated with great splendour; the night being thus dedicated to Jupiter Pluvius and the day to Cæsar Augustus. A poet expressed this by the following couplet :

Nocte pluit totâ, redeunt spectacula mane;

Divisum imperium cum Jove Cæsar habet.

This distich was set up in a public place, and Augustus was

* Apocalypse, XII., 1.

extremely anxious to discover the author of it. No claimant presenting himself, a certain poetaster called Bathyllus thought he might come forward to get the credit of it and he was honoured and rewarded accordingly. Whereupon the real author wrote up in the same place four words as the beginning of four pentameter lines:

Sic vos non vobis

Sic vos non vobis

Sic vos non vobis

Sic vos non vobis

The Emperor invited Bathyllus to prove his skill again by completing these lines; but he and many others tried in vain. Then Virgil came forward with his claim and with the proof thereof by completing as follows the four pentameters ;

Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.

Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves;
Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis, oves;
Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes;

Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra, boves.

The injustice of which Virgil was here the victim has often been inflicted in modern times on the authors of certain poems. Many consider "Waiting for the May" the most beautiful of the lyrics of Denis Florence McCarthy. It has always been published with his name, and yet "The Modern Elocutionist " of David Charles Bell, and "The Lyrics of Ireland" by Samuel Lover, give Clarence Mangan as the author of these "Summer Longings." I consider this a piece of gross and cruel negligence.

Another careless blunder of the same kind has just been committed in the United States, of which the uncomplaining victim is a daughter of Denis Florence McCarthy. S. M. S. whose name we may write in full as Sister Mary Stanislaus, wrote some simple and devout lines to Our Lady of Good Counsel to whom this appeal is addressed many times, "Mother, tell me what am I to do." This hymn has just been printed at Brooklyn with music by a Sister of Mercy, but it is stated on the title-page that the words were written by Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly. Such carelessness is very unfair and almost dishonest. Miss Donnelly herself is in no way to blame, and indeed it is she who indignantly called my attention to the matter.

From the same centre of civilization comes another amusing sample of this species of theft of which I am myself the not uncomplaining victim. In the English Messenger of the Sacred Heart, a quarter of a century ago I printed these verses to the Queen of May:

O Mary dearest Mother,

Thy month is come again,
Of all the months most welcome
To angels and to men-

The month of birds and blossoms,
The flowery, sunny May,

When earth and sky, dear Mother!
To thee fond tribute pay.

And so, O dearest Mother!
Before the simple shrine
Which we have decked with flowers
Because we call it thine,

We kneel to scatter incense

And prayer and song for thee:
Look down, O dearest Mother!
Look down to hear and see.

Look down on us thy children,
O Mother dear! look down;
The mother's face beams kindly
When other faces frown.

Though thou art Queen of Heaven,
And reign'st in joy above,
Yet still, O dearest Mother!
Look down on us with love.

Ah! we have forced thee often,
All loving as thou art,

To turn in sadness from us,

Thine eyes-but not thy heart!

In grief but not in anger,

Though we have tried thee sore:
Yet smile again, dear Mother!

We'll vex thy heart no more.

By Him who calls thee Mother,
And bids us do the same-
By Him, thy Son, who gives us
A brother's tender name-
By all the love that yearneth
Within thine own pure heart,

O Mother! be a mother.
And act a mother's part.

In Heaven's eternal May-time
Whose sunlight is the Lamb,
In the gladness and the glory,

The rapture and the calm-
We'll praise thee, and we'll bless thee,

With happy saints above,

If now, O mighty Mother,

Thou look on us with love.

This May-song was reprinted in the little volume called Madonna, and also in Mr. Orby Shipley's noble collection of "Carmina Mariana," and quite recently with very sweet music in Lyra Cordis-which I hope will not be overlooked by convent choirs. In all these cases the authorship was fully avowed; yet, in 1893, in an elegant volume called " Angelus Domini" containing legendary lays and poems in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and published in New York by "A Daughter of the Church evidently a very unprotestant Protestant-this poem is assigned to some supposititious Michael Russell, who, in the Index of Authors, is stated to have been born in 1781, and to have died in 1848, whereas the author of that poem has certainly survived to the present moment of the present year of Our Lord, and his name-saint is not an archangel but a publican. Sic vos non vobis.

M. R.