Laughter and Tears.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 13, 2 June 1911, Page 13

Laughter and Tears.

[For The Maokixand Wqkkeb.]

If I sing when my heart is gay, Should my song have one glad sound,, And never a note of its music betray Aught of the sorrows around ? Shall I feed on my joys as I go, Nor heed, midst life's glitter ana glare, The passer-by, whose despairing cry Of anguish, fills the air ? If I sing when my lieart is gay, Should my harp have a selfish ring, And tne gladness that charmed my gloom away Be ever the theme I sing? Breathing nought of hopes dying of blight, Of sweetness turned to gall, In a world where Might alone is Eight", And the weak must go to the wall 1 Should I sing when my heart is sad, Shall a sob displace the Psalm? And cannot the thought that a brother is glad Bear my sad spirit some balm ? Need my aching heart with its sighs* Ever drown his, rapturous cheers ? Whilst joy is shining in other men's eyes Must mine be blinded) with tears?; I saw a bird perched on a tree. I stopped and listened its lay; I knew not its theme, if of grief or of glee, Yet it charmed my gloom away. So some list the Poet's voice, Let it wake a song or a sigh— Their hearts are fain to receive the strain, Nor question the wherefore or why. That sun which but now shone on mc Oast a shadow e'er I wist, And the blackest cloud in the storni,swept sky Hath its edges silver-kist. The Past had its smiles and tears, The Present hath pleasure and pain. And unborn years, with, our hopes andfears We people again and again. The world hath its storm and calm, Life's pregnant with bitter and sweet, And the song and the sigh, the sob and the Ptealm Ohorus the march of our feet. It was so in the years gone by— God! must it ever be That no glad cry ascend on high But a groan bear it company ? B. H.