POETRY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2235, 1 June 1881, Page 4

POETRY.

WHY THEY GO TO CHCROH. The following lines were written by the Rev. J. S. Bouohier, M.A., of the Carnarvon Training College, and gained the ten guinea prize offered by the Chester Open Diooesan Uhuroh Association:— Some go to ohuroh just for a walk ; Same to stare, and laugh, and talk; Some go there to meet a friend, Some their idle time to spend; Some for general observation, Some for private speculation; Some to seek or find a lover, Some a courtship to disoover; Some go there to use their eyes And newest fashions criticise. Some to show their own smart dress, Some their neighbors to assess. Some to scan a robe or bonnet, Some to price the trimming on it. Some to learn the latest news, That friends at home they may amuse. Some to gossip, false and true, Safe hid within the sheltering pew. Some go there to please the squire, Some his daughters to admire. Some the parson go to fawn ; Some to lounge and some to yawn. Some to claim the parish doles j Some for bread and some for coals. Some beoause it's thought genteel; Some to vaunt their pious zeal. Some to show how sweet they sing; Some how loud their voioes ring. Some the preaoher go to hear, His style and voioe to praise or jeer. Some forgiveness to implore ; Some their sins to varnish o'er. Some to sit and doze and nod ; But few to kneel and worship God. POKER. To draw or not to draw, that is the question. Whether 'tis safer in the player to take The awful risk of skinning for a straight, Or, standing pat, to raise 'em all the limit. And thus, by bluffing, get it. To draw—to skin ; No more—and by that skin to get a full, Or two pairs or the fattest bouncing kings That luok is heir to—'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To draw—to skin ; To skin ! perchanoe to burst—ay, there's the rub! For in the draw of three what cards may come When wa have shuffled off the uncertain paok, Must give us pause. There's the respect Which makes calamity of a bob-tail flush, For who would bear the overwhelming blind, The reokless straddle, the wait on the edge, The insolence of pat hands, and the lifts The patient merit of the bluffer takes, When he himself might be much better off By simply passing ? What would trays up* hold, And go put on a small progressive raise. But that the dread of something after call, The undiscovered aeo-ful, to whose strength Suoh hands must bow, puzzles the will, And makes us rather keep the ohips we have Than be curious about the hands we know not of ? Thus bluffing doth make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of a four-heart flush Is siokliod with some dark and oussed club, And speculators in a jaok-pot's wealth, With this regard their interest turn away, And lose the right to open. —From an unpublished poem by Matthew Arnold.