VARIOUS VERSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8331, 12 January 1907, Page 3

VARIOUS VERSES.

"WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY." More swift, more fleet, than the sunstained feet of the Dawns that trample the nightMore fleet, more swift, than the gleams that lift in the wake of a wild star's flight,— Through the unpatched deeps of a sea that sweeps unplumbed, unsailed, unknown, Where the forces untamed, unseen, unnamed, have ruled from the First, alone, Now the ghosts of Thought, with a message caught from the tales of a dreaming past, . Unheard, unseen, with no sound nor sheen, speed through the ultimate vast. All battered and lamed and shattered and maimed the mail-ship crawls into port And the belted tire and the volted wire are the toys of the whirlwind's sport; And the grey sea's teeth in the depths beneath where the coiled green serpents play, Are crumbling crunching, mumbling, munching at the cable lengths alway. But now they may howl, the storms and growl, at the work of the line-man's hands, But gone is their pride with the boast of the tide that bit at the deepsea strands. For a sentence thrills through the bastioned hills, that has neither voice nor form, Nor rocks of the might of the chaossprite, that lashes the earth with his storm; Bitted and bridled and shackled and girdled, and bound with a linkless chain, The brute powers cower at the godlike power that dwells in a human brain. Man has stolen the wings of the death-less Things, that range where the spirit is lord; He is leagued anew with the Silence through the strands of a strandless cord.

Man's feet are clay, and they halt and stay with ,the graveyard worms and clods, But his plumed thought flings to the wind its wings in the haunts of the careless gods; For those old gods live, and they weave and give new meanings to old myth, And blossoms * and gleams of the world-old dreams flowers fresh from the truth at their pith. So the tales that twine round the ruined shrine where Hermes' priests have sung. They were true, they are true, they are born anew in the speech of a younger tongue. —Don Marquis, in the Kalipo. BROKE! Now I remember the days gone by That never again shall be, When I trod the bridge of a battleship And held her might in fee. ' Now I remember the gathered fleets, And the craftsman's pride I knew When the great ship circled and turned again, As the far flags bade her do; When the great gaunt bows swung dripping round As my word let her go, And my finger checked ten thousand horse At a touch, from fast to slow. My mates must- work the ringing guns, ■ My mates must police the sea; From North Cape South to Sydneyside 'There is never a place for me. So I must forget the hopes I had, And the dreams I had of yore, Of the reeling swing of a deep-sea fight Where the long black sea-guns roar; For this is law without excuse For all the Lords of the Sea, That each must hold his ship from harm Whatever the odds may be; And sin and error are all as one, No pardon may he gain For any struggle of warning needs Or stress of body and brain; For the Deep-sea Empire has its price, It is bought by blood and flame, By the risk of the guns and the risk of the sea, And the risk of ruin and shame. I may not hope to give my life, But a higher price I pay, 'The skill and the toil of twenty years For the fault of half a day. —J. H. Knight Adkin. The Spectator. THE ANTISEPTIC BABY. The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup Were playing in the garden when the Bunny gambolled up;, They looked upon the Creature with a loathing undisguised— It wasn't Disinfected and it wasn't Sterilised. They said it was a Microbe and a Hotbed of Disease, They steamed it in the vapor of a thousand odd degrees, They froze it in a freezer that was cold as Banished Hope, And washed it in permanganate witl carbolated soap In sulphurreted hydrogen they steepe< its wiggjy ears; They trimmed its frisky whisker: with a pair of hard-boile< shears;. They donned their rubber mitten and they took it by the hand. And elected it a member of thi Fumigated Band. There's not a Micrococcus in the garden where they play; They swim in pure iodoform a doze: times a day; And each imbibes his rations from ; Hygienic Cup— The Bunny and the Baby and th Prophylactic Pup. —Arthur Guiterman, in th Woman's Home Companion.