Selected Verse

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19887, 16 May 1936, Page 15 (Supplement)

Selected Verse

“ THE QUEEN MARY.” “Under the cloud’s wing, under the sky's calm breast O beautiful the towering Clyde-built ship t Acclaim, proclaim her. Lo 1 the airplanes dip: She moves, creation moves from active rest I “Steel, steam, vermilion-golden crowned slow pressed, Her weight of mountains with nor hitch nor slip Slides onward to the pasturing sea’s salt lip, Her realm henceforth the sun-encompassed West. “These made her: blood, brawn, brain, a nation’s skill, AncestrM Comet, Agamemnon's fleet, Tamed ocean to be saddled to her will. Peace is her dominion. In peace let nations meet The while, majestic-engined, she sustains 1 Mercurial course upon Atlantic plains.” —William Jeffrey. THOUGHT ON TIME. Unfathomable sea! Where waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears, Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow, Glaspeth the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more; Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore. Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm. Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea? —Shelley. V——r=. - -=:

VICTORY. Desolate are the fields of standing corn. Lonely the twilit hills, and broken The oaken lintel; Hushed are the harrying angels. Silent, their vanguard halts There is no trap, Lonely the placid stream and sorrowing hills, Empty the thorp, the garth untended. Desolate are the ways their spirit w'alks, Desolate the road toward no city; For this they came; The lonely islands and deserted seas. • —Michael Roberts. DEFEAT. It was not thus we fought, nor in this city, With the car-lines and the houses twisted, And the entrails of the factory smouldering; It was not here. These bodies are not ours, lying, defeated, Strangled by the unknown air, the drifting fumes, These tortured lips and flowers are not us, Our words were light. These conquerors are not ours, nor these our children, Building new barricades in stranger towns, Our city dies in us, and in our eyes, And dies defeated. —Michael Roberts.