Central.

It is always thus with the town where
the young folk come,
As they came in the years of the
Friars, where the Isis flows,
That the chant of the chimes is dim
med by the engines’ hum,
That the towers with the chimneys
vie as the grey town grows.
It is thus with the town that is named
from the northern hill
Where the Scots' King Edin looked
out on a rugged land,
A southern town, where they talk of
the gold rush still,
A dream come true to the seers of
the past who planned.
Here there are steadfast things that
are one with change
And strife, that is oddly knit with the
strands of peace,
And here are groves for the venturing
mind to range,
And here are proven truths for the
mind's increase.
But how shall this city live? Shall it
live on dreams?
Shall it live without them? The chime
with its tireless tone
Gives word of a proverb, true as the
cross, it seems,
“Man shall not live to the full by
bread alone.”
Yet back of this town there is space
whence it well might be
They carried the Eschol grapes in
times of old,
A land of Beulah, a joy for the eye to see,
Where the conduits lead to the heart
of the fecund mold.
Oh, you who languish, be sure that
your help shall come
From yonder hills, for the heart of a
town shall beat
To the tune that the winds on the
garth or the ploughed glebe drums,
And there's word of the waving corn
in the noon-day street.

—C. R. Allen.

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