SELECTED VERSE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21206, 31 August 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

SELECTED VERSE

0 LOVELY ENGLAND O lovely England, whose ancient peace War’s woeful dangers strain and fret, Be on the memory of thy past Thy sure devotion set! Give still, true freedom to fulfil, Thy all, without regret Heed, through the troubles that benumb Those voices, faint! yet clear, Chaunting their deathless songs—too oft To ears that would not hear; Urging thee, solemn, sweet, to meet Thy fate unmoved by fear. The foes of all they held most dear Defy thee in thy encircling seas, Summon to causes, else forlorn, The children at thy knees. Oh, that their hearts in days to come, May dream, unshamed, of these. —Walter de la Mare THE INVADER JN the first faint light of a summer dawn Come the roaring warplanes, thundering on, Murdering peace with a deadly rain— The Beast of Berlin has sprung again. He knows not pity, nor truth, nor right, But only the power of his ravening might, The pride of conquest, the scourge of fear, The perjured word and the coward’s tear. There’s a wrong to quench and a debt to pay, When he comes at last to the reckoning day, And Satan, his master, shall wring the toll From the blackest depths of a guilty soul.

TO CANADIANS, OUR FRIENDS IN NEED They say, that your Memorial has been broken. It. was but marble; your Memorial stands More lastingly than any made with hands, Wherever fellowship of men is sweet, Wherever freedom makes a heart to beat, Wherever in the world our tongue is spoken. It will be said of you, that, without spur, From fellowship alone and sense of kin, Out of your freedom, you took sides with Her Who is our Mother, asking nothing more Than hideous death upon a foreign shore That friendship among Nations might begin. By John Masefield. IN A WORLD SO DARK WITH WRONG The heart being eager—and wise In loving all bright things, Will crowd into the eyes At petals and wings— For a bird at rest, or flying Over the meadow, Or a slow day that is dying Folded in shadow, The heart will swell and ache And presently sing An easeful song for the sake Of the lovely thing— And a flower hid in grass It will love so much It will lose the way to pass, And linger to touch The flower, with a sigh of song That is like a kiss— To a world so dark with wrong The heart brings this. —David Morton.