Select Poetry.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 82, 27 July 1868, Page 179

Select Poetry.

ALEXANDRA’S OFFERING TO ERIN. Aia—“ The Pour-leaved Shamrock.” found this four-leaved shamrock, beside a ® fairy well, Take, Erin, take the charmed growth, and let it work its spell” To giver and receiver it brings blessing from above; The letters on its leaflets make the legend, TRUTH and LOVE. And. that's' a spell diffuses a magic all around, And clothes with bud and blossom the hardest hungriest ground.

To the fairy well it grew by two streams run side by side, One from TRUTH’S bitter fountain, one from LOVE’S sweet spring supplied, Sut round about the margin, sharp shards and fliuts were piled, . And thistles thoms and nettles grew stinging rank and wild. And if any water struggled through those stones and weeds to-day Twas now the bitter, now the sweet, that forced . its separate way.

And ever and anon came they who filled their pinkins full From the bitter stream for Erin, who thereat wry mouths would pull, And turn away to them that drew of Love’s stream warm and sweet, Though if quaffed by truth untempered it unnerved head, hands, and feet. "While if one stooped to clear the stones and pluck the weeds awayg Thousands of eager hands opposed, of clamorous tongues shrieked “Nay!”

Until at last there came the hour, and with the hour, the man, "Who set at nought opposing hands, nor heeded shriek nor ban. Sut thrust the hard and heaped up stones and stinging growths aside, And made way for thoseparted rills henceforth in one to glide; So letting warm attemper-cold, and bitter season sweet, That the waters mixed were cordial, whereof each was poison, neat.

And where these streams first mingle for blessing and for boon, And ripple golden to the sun, and silver to the moon This four-leaved shamrock hangs its head the sister founts above— And proclaims upon its leaflets its nurses TRUTH and LOVE, And who should bind on Erin’s brow and in Erin’s pathway strew Those leaves, but Alexandra, the Loving and the True? —•London Punch.