BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1222, 2 September 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

\ VERSES OLD AND NEW. SUNSET ON THE BED SEA. A waste of steol-groy writers, and a lino Of never-ending crags that bear no tree, Nor any sign Of life, where never aught of lite could be, Which' frowned, when neon was high, In pitiless compact with-the heating sky! Night falls; and in the track, of burning day, ' With' blazing scimitar, And eyes that flame afar, The Angel of the Sunset comes this way, And clonks the brows of every rigid .. height With royal vesture of outfolding night. Was it not well that. He Who with His presenco Heav'n and Earth fulfils, Who ■ gave whito crests and , thunder to ' the Sea, And to the Land its graco Of sliding waters, blowing winds, green face. Should crown His glory thus, in that He • spills His richest sunsets on tlio desolate hills? —Ed. J. Thompson. ALLEGORIE. (After Verlaine.) Summer, despotic, bleached, comatose, 'Neath the white ardour of tho coniplico ' sky, Ynwns as a tyrant, who, with listless eye, Watches some tortured victim's' final throes. The workman sleeps by his neglected toils; ' ■ No lark-song cheered tho morning s parched distress; • ... No wind breath cools tho blue arch pitiless; , • In the vast stagnant calm tho silence • boils. A torpor stills tho insects in the grass, And languid slow tho half-dried streamlets pass Between their stony ridges scorched bare. The pools, with sudden shifting dazzles starred, Shrink with each burning moment. Hero ■ and there ' , &re flitting wasps with black and yellow ' barred. ; —F. ONeill Gallagher. SHELLEY. (Lines written while exercises cried aloud to bo corrected.) In a grey wilderness Of books and boys. , (Struggling . with Ivearmess And querulous noise To hammer hard necessities Of algebraic truth • To fit tho sweet sun-haloed phantasies Of minds alive with youth.) I reached an idle hand and took, All stained and unknit, A little desolate book, And opened it. And as that fisherman of old . Who from a weed-green bottle broko Tho crusted ssal, and saw unfold Its awful beauty of quick smoke, So from that torn page sprang The tear-stained laughter and the happy pain , That held men prisoners wmlo Shelley sang, And showed them sunlit splendours in tho rain. T.P.C.W. ("Tipuca.") ULPHA-A MEMORY. Down from the Lakeland fells Duddon comes dancing; Chimes of sweet heather bells Cheering her way, Down from the Laud of Dreams,' Realm of Romancing . Queen of the 'Cumbrian streams ■ Sweeps to tho Bay. . O'er her in silver bright Birches are bending, v Massed in her mirror's light Graces—their -own. To her, with prattle sweet, Tributes are sending, Brooklets, whose baby feet Tripped by her throne. Ah, how we joyed in her, Blest by lier bounties'. Followed with pulso astir, Fired by her ycuth! Dwelt in her vale awhile, Drank whero tho fount is Free from tho grimo and guileCrystal as truth! —W.G.L.