A BARD who wrote in staves
Once made a heathen hymn.
It had this stern refrain,
That moved as though in pain:
" The under-glimpse of graves
Makes the sea grim. "

A southland singer sung
With happy heart and free.
The living, not the dead,
He dealt with, and he said:
" The world is glad and young,
And good to me. "

And ever since, mankind
Is shuttled back and forth
Between these singers twain
Of glad and sad refrain: —
The southland warm and kind,
The bitter north.