“Lo! on this sensitive, link—­
      It is one link, not a chain—­
    Man with his brother can think
      Spanning the breadth of the main,—­
    Man to his brother can speak
      Swift as the bolt from a cloud,
    And where its thunders were weak
      There his least whisper is loud!

    “Yea; for as Providence wills,
      Now doth intelligent man
    Conquer material ills,
      Wrestling them down as he can,—­
    And lay one weak little coil
      Under the width of the waves,
    Distance and Time are his spoil,
      Fetter’d as Caliban slaves!

    “Ariel?—­right through the sea
      We can fly swift as in air;
    Puck?—­forty minutes shall be
      Sloth to the bow that we bear: 
    Here is Earth’s girdle indeed,
      Just a thought-circlet of fire,—­
    Delicate Ariel freed
      Sings, as she flies, on a wire!

    “Courage, O servants of light,
      For you are safe to succeed;
    Lo! you are helping the Right,
      And shall be blest in your deed. 
    Lo! you shall bind in one band,
      Joining the nations as one,
    Brethren of every land,
      Blessing them under the sun!

    “This is Earth’s pulse of high health
      Thrilling with vigour and heat,
    Brotherhood, wisdom and wealth,
      Throbbing in every beat;
    But you must watch in good sooth
      Lest to false fever it swerve,—­
    Touch it with tenderest truth
      As the world’s exquisite nerve!

    “Let the first message across—­
      High-hearted Commerce, give heed—­
    Not be of profit or loss,
      But one electric indeed: 
    Praise to the Giver be given,
      For that He giveth man skill,
    Glory to God in the Heaven! 
      ‘Peace upon earth, and goodwill!’”

Another Electric poem of mine called “The First Message,” also in Gall’s edition, was sent over by telegraph to America.  What a miserable muddle, by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel’s Message;—­preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly spoilt that sublime trilogy by making “Peace upon earth, goodwill towards men,” read “Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well pleased.”  How clumsy and how ungrammatical, in whom!  The whole dear Bible has been terribly damaged by their 36,000 needless alterations in the New Testament (not 100 having been really necessary), and I know not how many more myriads in the Old, but happily their Version falls dead, and will soon be as forgotten as Dr. Conquest’s “Bible with 20,000 emendations,” whereof I now possess a somewhat scarce copy in the library at Albury.  I have less than no patience with those principally clerical revisers; albeit for their chairman, Dr. Ellicott, I retain a pleasant memory from Orkney recollections in old days.

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