SELECTED VERSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7988, 17 March 1906, Page 7

SELECTED VERSES.

THE DEVIL'S TATTOO. The devil's tattoo is a singular air— You tap out tfto tune cu the arm of a chair," Or beat out its bars and its measures , grotesque. While nervously eyeing the top of a desk. Or finger the chorda of its endless refrain When glum at your window you tap on tho pane— / And theso are the words of the devil's tattoo: "There's nothing, there's nothing whatever to do— So what can I do? There's uothinK to do — There's nothing, there's nothing a fellow can do." Wherever you play it, it grapples your soul; It drums and it hums with disconsolate roll; It rumbles its way to the best of your brain, And sighs iu a dirge that your hopes are in vain ; It. thrums till the half-wakened echoes pursue, And limp in the wake of the devil's tattoo: "There's nothing, there's nothing whatever to do— I'm telling you true, 'I boy'll do for you, too— , There's always hard luck for a fellow like you." The devil's tattoo is the roll of a. drum That summons the army of weakness to oorne, And get you to timing the rhythmical beat And march with it down the long road of defeat. You think you have lost, when you yield to itsohime; You think you have fallen— you need but to climb, To clench up your fists and to flgbt your way through, Forgetting the words of the devil's tattoo: There's nothing, there's nothing whatever to do So what can I do? There's nothing to do— There's nothing, there's nothing 1 whatever to do."

THE LAND OP DREAMS. (By Anm Lowe Glenn.) In tbe land whero the dreama come true, my deftr, In the land where the dreams come true, I'll buy you a coach all shining with gold ' „ • u And velvets and satins of richest* hue And a diamond olasp for your little shoe — In the land where the dreams come true. fn the land where the dreams come true, my dear, In the land where the dreams come true, All things are. fair and brave and gay—- , The sun is more bright and the sky more blueBut naught in that place is so fair as you— In the land where the dreams come true. GRIEF FOR THE DEAD. O hearts that never cease to yearn 1 0 brimming tearu that ne'er are dried; Tbe dead, though they depart, return As though they had not died! The living are the only dead; v The dead live—nevermore to die, And often, when we mourn them fled, They never were so high I And, though they lie beneath the waves, Or sleep within the churchyard dim, Ah! through how many different graves, God's children go to Him. Yet every grave gives up its dead Ere it is overgrown with grass; Then why [should hopeless tears be shed, Or need'' we cry, "Alas!" Or why should memory, veiled with gloom, And like a sorrowing mourner craped, Sit weeping o'er an empty tomb, Whose captives have escaped ? 'Tis but a mound—and will be mossed When'er the summer grass appears; The loved, though wept, are never lost; Wo'only lose—our tears! Nay, Hope may whisper with the dead, By bending forward where they are; But memory with a baokward tread, Communes with them afar. The joys we lose are but forecast, And we shall find them all once more; We look behind us for the Past, Bub, lo! 'tis all before!