SELECTED VERSE

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20917, 23 September 1939, Page 13 (Supplement)

SELECTED VERSE

CITY FOG A fog over a city is the low laughter that breaks restraint. It softens the houses; the red brick and the yellow brick are mellowed; like a sea-line that seems, now sky now water, their roofs rise where the mist hangs thick. The chimneys send up their smoke lazily. Pigeons fly from roof to roof, wings white like water that turns to foam. Over the trees and littered streets the soft tongues of fog curl. The pavements shine, and up and down the men and women come and go, the children laughing to schooL Their voices blend like water running in mountain streams; and over them all the gentle arms of mist reach and enfold, the fingers of mist bend and unbend. This is a kind hour; now it seems these many hearts beat rhythmically together; they move to one sure end. —Fred Lape PUSSY WILLOWS I love the pussy-willow— It sounds so sweet to me— Just fancy furry kittens Growing on a tree ! I pretend they’re really living, I close my eyes and dream That every little pussy Has a saucerful of cream. They come mewing down the branches And play awhile with me— A hundred little pussies From a pussy-willow tree. It’s only “just pretending,” They cannot play a game They are not really pussies, But I love their funny name. —Gloria Rawlinson

STORM All other storms were playthings to this storm. It was as if God broke the moulds of form And the huge fragments, hurtling, whizzed like wires Confusions stalked across the blotted shires. Now they joined hands. They doubled the wild din. They fought once more. Earth’s crust seemed fallen in. What could withstand such turmoil ? Rocks only could By twining their stone roots. Nothing else stood. Trees groaned like mandrakes. Sap in sweaty beads Stared from their barks. Boughs broke. But the crude weeds, Hemlock and ragwort, plantain, parsley and dock, Held out more grimly against the furious shock Than those gnarled trees that like a leathern tether Knit the broad acres of this land together. —Louis Golding DISCOVERY There comes an awe no logic can control When I behold a sweep of endless sea, Or, dreaming, contemplate the mystery Of midnight stars in heaven’s majestic bowl. What will, what goal engirds this cosmic whole, I cannot tell. But deep and sure in me I hear the whispers of eternity That taunt the unbelief within my soul. }. see the birds pursue their migrant way, The crocuses that burst the barren sod, The birth and miracle of each new day, The law that grips the planet and the clod. It is enough ! The spirit spurns the clay, The clue is found, the riddle answered— God. —Alfred Grant Walton