n empyrean wars,
The sons of simple men out-vie
God's splendid meteors;
Where'er the mills of Vulcan roared
And blinked against the night,
Swart shapes with sweat-washed eyes have
stored
The clean, lean lightnings of the Lord
To be a league-long, leaping sword
In this our holy fight.

The small men know the burden well,
The dreadful paths they know,
With fear and death and torture dwell.
And sup and sleep with, woe.
They're riven in the shrapnel gust,
But; blind and reeling, plan
Another blow, a final thrust
To subjugate the tyrant's lust.
So, bleeding, blundering in the dust,
Men fight and die for MAN.

THE CHURCH BELLS.

The Viennese authorities have melted down
the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal
for guns or muntions. Every poor village
has made a similar gift.--Lokal Anzeiger.

THE great bell booms across the town,
Reverberant and slow,
And drifting from their houses down
The calm-eyed people go.
Their feet fall on the portal stones
Their fathers' fathers trod;
And still the bell, with reverent tones,
From cottage nooks and purple thrones
Is calling souls to God.

The chapel bells with ardor spake
Above the poplars tall,
And perfumed Sabbath seemed to wake.
Responsive to their call
From dappled vale and green hillside
And nestling village hives
The peasants came in simple pride
To hear how their Lord Jesus died
To sweeten all their lives.

. . .

They boom beyond the battered town;
The hills are belching smoke;
And valleys charred and ranges brown
Are quaking 'neath the stroke.
The iron roar to Heaven swells,
And domes and steeples nod;
Through cities vast and ferny dells
And village streets the clamant bells
Are calling souls to God!

THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT.

THE young lieutenant's face was grey.
As came the day.
The watchers saw it lifting white
And ghostlike from the pool of night.
His eyes were wide and strangely lit.
Each thought in that unhallowed pit:
"I, too, may seem like one who dies
With wide, set eyes."

He stood so still we thought it death,
For through the breath
Of reeking shell we came, and fire,
To hell, unlit, of blood and mire.
Tianced in a chill delirium
We wondered, though our lips were dumb
What precious thing his fingers pressed
Against his breast.

His left hand clutched so lovingly
What none might see.
All bloodless were his lips beneath
The straight, w