Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, 3 November 1921, Page 24

Se lected Poetry

One Day in Summer This singing Summertime has" never done With afternoons all gold and dust and lire. And windy trees blown silver in tho sun, The lights of earth, her musics’ and desire; — But day by day, and hour by lighted hour, Something beyond the summer earth and sky, Burns through this passion of a world in flower, — Some ghostly sense of lovers thronging by. '■» S* And I have thought, upon this windy hill, Where bends and sways the long, dream-troubled grass, That I nhiy know tho heart-beats, tender still, Of gone*, forgotten lovers where they pass, — Their loved too long for one brief life to hold, Beating and burning through this dust and gold. , —David Morton, in Current Opinion. ■ . Lost Ships “Where have you hidden them?” I asked the sea, And from its rim an answer came to me In lazy tumblings like purple wheat Upon the ivory shore-line at my feet, But scarfed in magic by the silver foam, I lost the message it was bringing home. ‘•‘Where' are the galleons,” I cried afar, “The Argosies, the barks, the men-of-war, The battened pinnaces that rode the bay, * The'‘souls and ingots that you warped away?” A white shape rose above the curving sea, But fog swept through ere it could signal me. Yet on T waited till the world was night, Then gleamed the shape again in fog-drenched light, It was the lodestar risen from the sea, It was the lurestar come to answer me. And lest I hear its beckoning reply, I fled under a hill that hid the sky. Thomas Hornsby Ferril, in the Denver Times. * Kathleen ni Houlihan “Know that I would accounted be True brother of that company Who strive to sweeten Ireland’s wrong With ballad, storv, rhyme and song.” W. B. Yeats. Kathleen ni Houlihan, always young, Though black, black sorrow your soul has wrung, Though from your eyelids the bitter tears Have fallen for seven hundred years! Kathleen ni Houlihan, always fair, Spite of tho gray in your raven hair. Mother of heroes, straight and strong, Queen of a white-robed martyr throng! ’Kathleen ni Houlihan, close you are To the hearts of your children exiled far. Fond are the greetings, fond and sweet, They send o’er the billows that lave your feet. Kathleen ni Houlihan, hear them call! “We see the writing upon the wall, ■ The shattered gibbet, the severed. chain, And the tyrant lying where thou hast lain! . ; *• - “Kathleen ni Houlihan, tried and true, Lights are gleaming the darkness through. The Star of Hope, with its rays divine, The Star ,of Freedom for thee and thine. Kathleen ni Houlihan, just a while ; s Andy.brightly your emerald hills will smile, And your, streams run laughing from shore to shore, • . When Erin comes to her own once more! ' —Mary E. Mannix, in the Irish World.

A Shadow of Dante So Stromboli retreated in the gloom, Flinging red flame and molten lava high, A flaring portent; We, who passed it by, Carry that lurid memory to the tomb; Yet round its crater living flowers bloom, The vine, fig, olive, grow and fructify, Above it laughs the blue Italian sky, A paradise upon the verge of doom. ' As fiery as that red volcanic blast, Through years he wrestled with his unseen Foe, Wailing in pain, “I will not let Thee go, Until Thou bless me who have held Thee fast,” And so our Dante from his hell of woe Arose to paradise and peace at last. —C. Field, in the Westminister Gazette, V The Eternal Way I take no shame that still I sing the rose And the young moon, and Helen’s face and spring; And strive to fill my song with sound of streams; And light of dreams; Choosing some beautiful eternal thing, That ever comes like April— ever goes. I have no envy of those dusty themes Born of the sweat and clamor of the hour — Dust unto dust returningnor any shame have I, ’Mid sack of towns, to ponder on a flower: For still the sorrow of Troy-town is mine, And the great Hector scarce is dead an hour. All heroes and all lovers, that came to die Make pity’s eyes with grief immortal shine Yea ! still my cheeks are wet For little Juliet, And many a broken-hearted lover’s tale, Told by the nightingale. Nor have I shame to strive the ancient way, With rime that runs to meet its sister rime, Or in some metre that hath learnt from Time The heart’s own chime. These ways are not more old Than the unmeditated modern lay, And all those little heresies of song Already old when Homer still was young. — Richard Le Gallienne, in the Literary Digest. . Low Tide The tide draws out across the dappled sand, Threading the streams, gray-veining all its brow Ribbed firmness; and the light shrinks to a band Of faded yellow; till the dark creeps down, Folding a lost win'd drifting through the town. Dark folds me too, and the wind walks with me A tireless traveller. How his feet have strayed Beside the sand-hills how his hands made free Among my hair, a deeper dusk in shade Blown as dead leaves hang from a tree decayed. So from me, too,, life ebbs, and following so, The quiet pool dwindles and the silver vein; Till brown and bare and barren I must grow To feel the impress of each foot a pain And every rock a dark dream of my brain. Dream-bound I lie and feel a child delay Above my head to pull the seaweed there; And the dear wind, my fellow.: traveller, stay To stroke my feet or tumble in my hair Or blind with sand the idler’s sullen stare. I am the sand. But would I were the sea, To clasp and kiss and kill, to laugh and run, To scatter beauty and to make love, free As wave meets wave beneath the amorous sun, ' To smile and spread and mingle one by one. Passive I lie night-long. Pale day upsprings, And up dry channels surges life anew; And breathless in the staggering wind joy flings My body upright ; and the first clear blue Splits in a flash the eastern curtain through. Mart Stella Edwards, in the Nation.