“If ever thou hast loved thy dog or horse,
      Or other favourite affectionate thing,
    If thou dost recognise in God the source
      Of all that live, their Father and their King,
    Stand with us on this rescue;—­for the force
      Of sciolists hath legal right to seize
    Such innocents to torture as they please,
      Alive and sentient, with demoniac skill;
    Ungodly men! hot with the lawless lust
      Of violating Nature’s holiest fane,
    Breaking it open at your wicked will,—­
      Yet shall ye tremble!—­for the Judge is just;
    To Him those victims do not plead in vain,
      On you for aeons crowd their hours of pain.”

When I was last at Boston my spirit was stirred by what I have poetised below:  it has only appeared in some American papers, but I hope will be acceptable here.

    The Omnibus Hack.

    “Worn, jaded, and faint, plodding on in the track,
    I praise your great patience, poor omnibus hack;
    In whose sad gentle eyes my spirit can trace
    The gloom of despair in that passionless face,
    While way-wearied muscles, strain’d out to the full
    And cruelly check’d by the pitiless pull,
    With little for food, but of lashes no lack,
    Force me to pray for you, omnibus hack!

    “Yes I—­if I can pity you, omnibus hack,
    For nerves all atremble and sinews awrack,
    How should not his Maker, the Father above,
    Be just to His creature, and grant him His love? 
    Why may not His mercy give somewhat of bliss
    In some better world to compensate for this,
    By animal pleasure for animal pain,
    Receiving their lives but to give them again?

    “And which of us isn’t an omnibus hack,
    With galls on his withers and sores on his back,—­
    Buckled to circumstance, driven by fate,
    And chain’d on the pole of a oar that we hate—­
    Yon ponderous Past which we drag fast or slow
    On the coarse-mended Present, this dull road we go,
    Hard-curb’d on the tongue and no bearing-rein slack,
    Ah! who of us isn’t that omnibus hack?

    “Yet great is the comfort considering thus
    That God doth take thought as for him so for us;
    That we shall find rest, reward, and relief
    Outweighing, outpaying all pain and all grief;
    That all things are kindly remembered elsewhere,
    The shame and the wrong and the press and the care,
    The evils that keep all better aback,
    And make one feel now but an omnibus hack.

    “An omnibus hack?—­and only a drudge?—­
    Is Duty no more in the eyes of the Judge? 
    He set thee this toil; His providence gave
    These bounds to His freedman; yes, free—­not a slave! 
    And if thou wilt serve Him, content with thy lot,
    Cheerfully working and murmuring not,
    Be sure, my poor brother—­whose skies are so black—­
    Thou art His dear child, though an omnibus hack!”