Select Poetry.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4586, 15 September 1883, Page 1

Select Poetry.

CHDECH GOING TIM.

Tim Black ia bedridden, you say ? Well now, I'm sorry. Poor old Tim! There's not in all the place to-day A soul as will not pity him. Theße twenty years, come hail, come snow, Come winter cold, or summer heat, Week after week to church he'd go On them two hobbling sticks for feet. These years he's gone on crutches. Yet , One never heard the least complaint, And see how other men will fret * , At nothing; Tim was quite a saint. And now there's service every day, I say they keep it upfor him; We busier ones, we keep away— There's mostly no one there but Tim. Yes, quite a saint he was. Although He never .was a likely man At his own trade; indeed, I know Many's the day I've pitied Nan. She had a time of it, his wife, ® With all those children and no wage , As like as not, from Tim. Tho life She led I she looked three times her age. The half ho had he'd give to tramps If they were hungry, or it was coldPampering up them idle scamps, While Nan grew lean, and pinched, and old. He'd let her grumble. Not a word Or blow from him she ever had— And yet I've heard her sigh, and heard Her say she wished as he was bad. Atop of all the fever came: . A. nd Tim went hobbling past on sticks. Still one felt happiei*, all the same, When he'd gone by to church at six.' Not that I wished to go. Not I! With Joe so wild and all those "boysIt takes my day to clean, and try To settle down the dust and noise. But still-out of it all, to glance And Bee Tim hobbling by so calm, As though he heard the angels' chant* And saw their branding crowns of pajm. And when he smiled, he had a look, One's burden seemed to loose and roll Like Christian's in the picture-book: It was a comfort on the whole. It made one easier like, somehow It made one, somehow, feel so Bare, That far above the dust and row The glory of God does still endure. You say he's well, though he can't stir: sure you mean it kind—But, see, , -It s not for him I'm crying, sir; It's not for Tim, sir: it's forme.

A. M. F. Robinson.