The world was little to my childish thinking,
And innocent of sin and sinful things;
I saw the stars above me flashing, winking—­
To fly and catch them, how I longed for wings!

     I saw the moon behind the hills declining,
       And thought, O were I on yon lofty ground,
     I’d learn the truth; for here there’s no divining
       How large it is, how beautiful, how round!

     In wonder, too, I saw God’s sun pursuing
       His westward course, to ocean’s lap of gold;
     And yet at morn the East he was renewing
       With wide-spread, rosy tints, this artist old.

     Then turned my thoughts to God the Father gracious,
       Who fashioned me and that great orb on high,
     And the night’s jewels, decking heaven spacious;
       From pole to pole its arch to glorify.

     With childish piety my lips repeated
       The prayer learned at my pious mother’s knee: 
     Help me remember, Jesus, I entreated,
       That I must grow up good and true to Thee!

     Then for the household did I make petition,
       For kindred, friends, and for the town’s folk, last;
     The unknown King, the outcast, whose condition
       Darkened my childish joy, as he slunk past.

     All lost, all vanished, childhood’s days so eager! 
       My peace, my joy with them have fled away;
     I’ve only memory left:  possession meagre;
       Oh, never may that leave me, Lord, I pray.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY

(1816-)

In Bailey we have a striking instance of the man whose reputation is made suddenly by a single work, which obtains an amazing popularity, and which is presently almost forgotten except as a name.  When in 1839 the long poem ‘Festus’ appeared, its author was an unknown youth, who had hardly reached his majority.  Within a few months he was a celebrity.  That so dignified and suggestive a performance should have come from so young a poet was considered a marvel of precocity by the literary world, both English and American.

The author of ‘Festus’ was born at Basford, Nottinghamshire, England, April 22nd, 1816.  Educated at the public schools of Nottingham, and at Glasgow University, he studied law, and at nineteen entered Lincoln’s Inn.  In 1840 he was admitted to the bar.  But his vocation in life appears to have been metaphysical and spiritual rather than legal.

His ‘Festus:  a Poem,’ containing fifty-five episodes or successive scenes,—­some thirty-five thousand lines,—­was begun in his twentieth year.  Three years later it was in the hands of the English reading public.  Like Goethe’s ‘Faust’ in pursuing the course of a human soul through influences emanating from the Supreme Good and the Supreme Evil; in having Heaven and the World as its scene; in its inclusion of God and the Devil, the Archangels and Angels, the