ORIGINAL POETRY.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 378, 5 March 1880, Page 3

ORIGINAL POETRY.

VITA DUPLEX. Oh the sad looking back on our lifeFew sweets amid so many woes I Oh the scars scarcely healed from the strife, And the numbness fromnumerouß blows! The memory of poisonous pleasure Pain-steeped in the brine of our tears— Of barren flower-buds without measure, To be lost in the lapse of long years. It is thus that we all have to live Two lives that are linked in the one ; We must take what the present can give, And by what men see we are known : But the eyelids of years that have waned Can unclose, although cold, and reveal Eyes, beneath them, reproachful and pained, Eyes, relentless and stabbing like steel. A word in the midst of our talkSome soft, harmless sound you may say, Will pierce to the heart, as a hawk Darts his beak through the breast of his prey. A\omething that chanced in old days, We deemed buried deep years beneath, Will shine in our eyes with a blaze Like the flash of a sword from its shedh. 01' fountains filled full of hot tears That flowed in our pain from the heart! Ob webs that we wove from our fears In a loom, wrought of woe, not of art! Oh songs to be sung without voice, j 'Hayed on harps never made by the ! hand 2 Oh streams that took rise in our joys, To be lost in a deeert of sand! A desert with'hopes overheaped, Hopes ruined and red with Time's rust, Good intentions in Failure's foam steeped, Which Lot winds winged with Woe dry to dust; Where dead dreams into ashes have turned, The desire of the lips and tbe eyes,* And Love's flame, that has passionate burned, With a sigh of despair droops and dies. But a time will arrive when we sink la a eea without wind, without tides; Where we sorrow not, joy not, nor think, "Vfhere Forgetfulness only abides ; "Where no gleams of the dreams of days dead, Or of passions forced under earth's sun, 'Can pierce the dim depths overhead— Where our two lives in death become one. X.T.P.