VARIOUS VERSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8325, 5 January 1907, Page 3

VARIOUS VERSES.

CIGARETTE SMOKE. Light as a flitting jest that leaves no sting, Hazy and tenuous as the voice of !'*■ fame, The evanescence of a passing name, Or like a fume of vain imagining— Unstable thought which heedless youth may fling At wisdom's steadfast torch for praise or blame; Or like the cloudy myths which ages claim As truth, that spread and darken where they ejing. It floats and coils and curls and fades away, A mist —a fume —a breath —a cloud —a dream — The dim and dusty shimmer of a" beam, The wasting semblance of our little day, The end of what we realise or seem, its joys and griefs and work and play. —lsidore G. Ascher. THE LOT OF THE CANDIDATE. '' The speaker stood on the platform high, In the midst of a deafening dm, And strove, as the early martyrs did To hammer his principles in; Canvassing late and early for votes, "Bullocking" early and late, It isn't all beer 'and skittles, my friend, The work of a candidate. sJs§. Once he was truthful and brave and kind, As honoured as man could be, So they picked him out as "proper j and fit" .._ , To battle for Bungaree; | Now he's proved a liar, a rogue, and cheat, 2....■-:£ -'^©S And he curses the bitter fate ; marked him out from the rest of men As aWitable'candidate. "'. ' When the Tempter pointed to fame and power, He neither thought nor saw, He was only a sacrificial jbone '-" For the dogs in the street to gnaw; "Now he holds such honours in small ! regard, Though they tell him the cause is great, 'There are some things sadder—but

very few — Than the woes df thu'candidate. _ He has only canvassed a month'or so, But it feels like a long bad year, . And is wishing, as never a sportsman did, That:the "Glorious Twelfth" were here; , "With a world of longing he looks ahead To the day that decides his fate, For then he'll be either an M.H.R., Or an anti-candidate. —"Woomera," in the Australasian. THE WARDER AT THE GATE. Envy not the millionaire His wealth and proud estate; The oldest sinner of us all — He doesn't tarry late. Death clinks the latch before we know— . He's always near the gate! Yet still we plot, and still we plan, And envy all the great— Master-man and serving-man, We ever rail at Fate, While Death stands there and clinks the latch — The warder at the gate!

FOR THOSE WHO FAIL. ■'.."All honour to him who shall win the prize," The world has cried for a thousand years, But to him who tries and who fails and dies I give honour and glory and tears. ' ' Give glory and honour and pitiful tears To all who fail in their deeds sublime ; 'Theirghosts are many in the van of years, They were bom with time in advance of time. , ■ Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame And lets God finish the thoughts sublime. And great ,f is the man with a sword , . undrawn "^ And good is the man who refrains from wine, But the man who fails and yet still fights on Lo, he is the twin-brother of mine. —Joaquin Miller.