OUR TYPOS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1914, 20 February 1875, Page 4

OUR TYPOS.

Weary of hand, weary of braio, The lean compositor worked and stood At his case, by the window, blotched with rain, Setting words hard to be understood. For writers will write of the Infinite, And even the comic writers, who should Be easy, and plain, and definitej Are cruel to their own kin and blood/ Set up these words, O brother mine, ; (That's if you can) in your measured stick. He as the copy gr«ws, line by line, I hear the stamps going, tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, rtick, as he breathed the gas,

That reeks from the sooty wall and ceil; His hair was powdered with snow, alas!

Even printer*' bones are not wrought of steel But printers' heads are rery good; heads— And I testify to the fact, because— They often make out, through blacks and reds, The oddly-written wiidom ef Zoz. Pity that men, intelligent, good, Sheuld ever fall homeless, friendless, tick ; I say this in sorrow, in no vague mood, Hearing the stamps and their tick, tick, tick. The world whirls round aid we all grow old,

The cunning hand -will renounce its prey, And tired fingers at last must fold Themselves into a mocking holiday— The fingers that, week or morning, give

The book, the sheet, unto you or me— The second best things for which we lire—

May wrinkle to akin, in poverty. Far up some alley, or den, or hole, r Submerged in shadow of slate and brick; I hear through the inmost void of my soul, ' - The picked-up stamps, and their tick, click, ]]-:" tick/- ■'■; ■■■■■■v ■"■'■■'■ '"■ ' ■■ -:

And shall this beT-shall the men who toil : In civilizations earliest van, Be.denied some share of the common spoilThat the" world gives free, since the world

. began.? - : ....: '■• .•/.■... .' ..,<-. '.. . ]^; Your pension nobles, sinecure lords, Save royalties from inoffensive slight; What! shoulder the men whose iron words

Fill city, and town, and hut, with light! Thank herften, that day is far away, When friends of their saviours grew so'iick; Renew for the years of the blind and gray The pleasant sound of the tick, click, tick. —Zozimus.