VARIOUS VERSES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8342, 26 January 1907, Page 3

VARIOUS VERSES.

THE BRAVE OLD WAY. I say risk all for one warm kiss; I say 'twere better risk the fall. Like Romeo, to venture all, j •And boldly climb to deadly bliss. I like that savage, Sabine way; What mighty minstrels came of it! Their songs are ringing to this day, The bravest ever sung or writ. Their loves the love of Juliet, Or Portia, Desdemona, yes. The old true loves are living yet; And we, we love, we weep, we sigh In love with loves that will not die. Then take her, lover, sword in hand, Hot-blooded and red-handed; clasp Her sudden, stormy, tall and grand/ And lift her in your iron grasp And kiss her, kiss her till she cries From keen, sweet happy, killing pain. ~ Aye, kiss her till she seeming dies; Aye, kiss her till she dies, and then, Why, kiss her back to life again! —Joaquin Miller.

RELIABILITY. The earth has been a-quakin' An' a-tremblin' an' a-shakin' Till we're gettin' apprehensive an' perplexed; An' the scientists are sellin' Books which say that there's no tellin* The trouble that may happen to us " next, An' the orators is stormin' An' reformers is reformin' Till we wonder jes' what's wrong an' who's to blame; An' it's really almost pleasant In such queertimea as the present To find the bill a-comin' jes' the same. It's a comforhin' assurance, / This one custom whose endurance Survives the shocks an' changes that appall, The sun fur which we're pinin' "Neath a cloud may shut his shinin' An' summer-time hold over into fall; Good men may be rejected An' the bad ones get elected An' folly be uplifted into fame; But there's one thing never changes How-so-e'er our custom ranges— The bills keep comin' reg'lar jes' the same. / *

THE WIPE. "Nay, do not bid me go, [she said] For I must guard his sleep." (On wall and floor the candles made Flickering shadow, shade on shade; Without; an April robin sung ■■ Of tryst that Love doth keep, ♦ But here, faint scent of violets clung And lilies tall their censers swung). "Mine eyes must look their fill fshe said] They have no time to wep." "Two-score of years of Love, [she said] And yet the half not told!" (The candles touched with tender light Her hair and his, so white, so white: Her eyas, wherein the visioned Past Lay like a chat 1 !; unrolled In whose dim seas, star-girdled, vast, The long years wera bat plummets cast) "They only know Love's deeps, ... [sho said] , Who loving, have grown old." "Babes of his flesh, I bore, [she said] Fair girl and lusty son." (They pressed her side with yearning dear, Her children brought their children near, Love folded her and love caressed, ; And yet she was alone). "Ye, —ye have drawn Life at my breast, But ere ye came it gave him rest. Mother of many I am, [she said] I was the wife of One." "Yea, —we have lived and loved!— [she said] What counts this passing pain?" (About her, in the candle's flame A sudden glory went and came). "What counts this hour I wait until We love and live again? Bear out his body where ye will— I He stays,—my Love, my Bridegroom, still God made us one—the living • Death cannot make us twain!" —Ednah Proctor Glarke,in Scribner's.