THE FAMINE WIND

New Zealand Tablet, 24 April 1919, Page 43

THE FAMINE WIND

_ (For the N.Z. Tablet.)' - The land lay alone in the twilight, 1 , , A And ever each hill and slim spire * Fell the quiet ash of the darkness . - From the sun’s long embers of,- fire. - {.... The peasants in every cottage , ; Builded their fires of peat, ; '.. Singing the songs of their country, Fierce, and lonely, and sweet. From out the four corners of twilight, A wind blew in from the shore, A wind so great and so dreary Had never been known before.. It cried at a window in Antrim, It caught at a Connacht hasp. It sobbed to a fisher in Munster, And startled his net from his grasp. And the land alone in the twilight Heard the innocent terror of men, And the question of birds and of children And she knew not the answer then.' But when in the day of her hunger, She saw ’neath the stricken skies, The pale, dead mouths of the striplings. And the children’s hollow eyes. She remembered the moaning twilight. And the wind in the furze and trees, With its strange and pitiful warning Of unspeakable agonies. And she knew that the King of sorrows, With His sceptre of pain and loss, Had touched her brow as an equal, And said, “Thou must bear the Cross.” Then remembering the olive garden, . . And the hours of His passion blind, He had come to earth in His grieving. And wept along the wind. . ' —E. D.