DECLAMATION.

SHE sat in her eternal house, The sovereign mother of mankind; Before her was the peopled world, The hollow night behind. “Below my feet the thunders break, Above my head the stars rejoice; But man, although he babbles much, Has never found a voice. “Ten thousand years have come and gone, And not an hour of any day But he has dumbly looked to me The things he could not say. “It shall be so no more,” she said; And then, revolving in her mind, She thought, “I will create a child Shall speak for all his kind.” It was the spring-time of the year, And, lo! where Avon’s waters flow, The child, her darling, came on earth Three hundred years ago. There was no portent in the sky, No cry, like Pan’s, along the seas, Nor hovered round his baby mouth The swarm of classic bees. What other children were he was; If more, ’twas not to mortal ken; The being likest to mankind Made him the man of men. Before he came, his like was not, Nor left he heirs to share his powers. The mighty mother sent him here To be her voice and ours; To be her oracle to man; To be what man may be to her; Between the Maker and the made The best interpreter. Richard H. Stoddard.