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Show By THOMAS HARDY SONNET ON THE BELGIAN EXPATRIATION I dreamt that people front the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels Of my own country, that the musical rhymes Rang by them into space at measured times Amid the market's daily stir and stress, And the night's empty starlit silentness, .Mzght solace souls of this and kindred climes. Then I awoke : and lo, before me stood The visioned ones, but pale and full of fear ; From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend, No carillons in their train. Vicissitude Had left these tinlzling to the inoaders' ear, And ravaged street, and smouldering gable-end. By THE MARQUESS OF CREWE SALUTING with deep respect the gallant Belgians and their noble Sovereign, we reflect that never in the world's history has any nation, with so slender a pretence of reason, been subjected to outrage so cruel and so deliberate as that which has lately stirred the blood of civilised mankind. Those who begin by tearing up a solemn engagement have not far to descend in the moral scale before they lay an innocent country waste; but as an English poet wrote when Lombardy was likewise trampled by a foreign oppressor : And though the stranger stand, 'tis true, By force and fortune's right he stands ; By fortune, which is in God's hands, And strength, which yet shall spring in you. |