VARIOUS VERSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8150, 26 May 1906, Page 3

VARIOUS VERSES.

HOME LIFE. By Mra M. A. Kidder. It tbe children find not love within, And a golden chain to bind it, Of words of oheer and kieses dear, They'll go outside to find it. If home lacks joys, our girls and boys Will seek them elsewhere, mind it. For the blood ia warm in growing limbe, And leaps to tuneful measures. While hearts in ryhuie, ia childtime, Beats high for wholesome pleaeuies— Right merry feet, and voices sweet, Have they, our household treasures! If the fire bums low, and ashes lie Broadcast, as one might sow it, With naught complete, or fair, or neat, The little ones first know it—- ' A child's youug heart has at the start The instinct of the poet. Then let us fan the homo llaze high, And set the place in order, .Decking the rooma with rosy blooms And heart's-ease for the border, Taking good care to match each snare And bar out giim disorder. Thua may we keep 'our jewels safe— Tbe children God hath given~ And train them right, in paths of light, Each day of all t he seven, Till by and by, bsyond the sky, We find tbe gate of heaven. BEYOND THE SPECTRUM. We cannot look beyond The spectrum's mystic bar. Beyond the violet light Aye,- other lights there are, And waves that touoh us not, Voyaging far. Vast ordered forces, Invisible, unfell, Their language less than sound, Their name unspelt. Suns cannot brighten them, Nor white heat melt. We ohip an ®ye hole through (Sweden borg, Roentgen, Hertz) Into that walled land Glimpsed as by candlo spurte. Oar naked ignorance It huris, it hurß!

Or, in the clammy dark We dig, aa dwarfs for coal. Yet oue Mind fashioned it And us, a luminous whola, As, lastly, tliou sbalt see, Thou, O my soul. —Florence Wilkiaaon, in "McClure'e." MY DESIRE. Fate has given me many a gift Hp which men moat aspire, Lovely, precious, and costly things, Bat not my heart's deaire. Many a man has a secret dream Of where his soul would be. Mine is a low verandah'd house In a tope beside the eea. Over the roof tall palms should wave, Swaying from side to side. Every night we should fall asleep To the rhythm ot the tide. t The dawn should be gay with the song of birds And the stir of flattering wings. Surely the joy ot life is hid , In sl'nple and tender things! At eve the waves should shimmer with gold In the rosy sunset rays; Emerald velvet flats of rice Would rest tb& landward gaze. A boat must rook at the later'te steps In a reef-protected pool, For we should sail through the starlight night When the winds were calm and cool. I am so tired of all this World, Its folly and fret and care. Find me a little scanted home Amongst thy loosened hair. Give me a soft and secret place Against thine amber breast, Where, hidden away from all mankind, My soul may come to rest. Many a man has a secret dream Of where his life might be; Mine is a lovely, lonely place With sunshine and the sea. —Laurence Hope, in "Last Poems."

PROGRESS. In its giving and its getting, In ita smifing and its fretting, In its awful years of toiling And ita awful days of war, Ever on the world is moving And all human life is proving, It is reaotaing towards the purpose That the great God made it for. "Through its laughing and its weeping Throush its losing and its keeping, Through its follies and its labours, Weaving in and out of sight, To the «nd from the beginning, Through all virtue and all sinning, Keeled from God's great spool of Progress Ruis the gulden thread of Right. All the darknees and the errors, All the sorrows and the terrors, "Time nas painted in the background On tho terrors of the world; All the beauty of life's story He will do in tones of glory, When these final blots of shadow Prom his brushes have been hurled. —Ella Wheeler Wilcox.