A POEM BY THE POPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 4, 23 May 1890, Page 7

A POEM BY THE POPE.

The Tablet publishes a translation of a poem by the Pope on hia brother's death. It will be seen that the poem takes the form of a dialogue between Leo Xtll. and his late brother, Cardinal Pecci : —

Joseph. Justice has claimeJ her due, estranged my past, The starry-spangled skies have oped their gates ; Thou who dost bear i' the world such heavy fates, Owest the more to God the more thou bear'st. Take heart, and steer thy skiff to the high seas, And 'neath the smiling Godhead nerve thy heart To work for virtue and religion's part. So thou mayest cool thine eyes in Heaven's breeze. Weep for thy sin and shun the flames of death, While, Joachim, thou draw thy life's fond breath.

Joachim. Lo ! while 1 live and in my tired frame The life-blood runs, with tears I will repent What wrong is done. But thou, to whom is lent The light that faileth not — I call tby name ; Raise me, outworn with cares and dim with age, Slipping from life ; and from the heights of Heave* Hold me in thought — me haplessly o'erdriven, And spent i' the waves by the strong whirlwind's rage.

We contend that at the present time there is, and for the last half century there has been evolving an altered relation between body and mind. The mind— the brain, in short — of the present generation is more generally and intensely active than was the mind. of immediately preceding generations. This is not the same aa saying that the average m»n of the present generation has more sense and judgment than his grandfather, or that the poets and philosophers of tbe present age are greater than Shakespeare or Goethe, than Deecartes, or Newton. It is only affirming that the average man's mind s much more active and is subjected to mucn more wear and tear ihan was the average man's mind, of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and tighteenth centuries. It is, therefore, inperatively incumbent upon ehe practical physician that he constantly stady, understand and tpractice the " medication of the mind." In the consideration of almost every individual case it is as necessary to take into the " brief " the state of the mind as it is to include the condition of the teeth, or the bowels, or any other primary organ or function of tbe body. — Hospital.