Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, 10 November 1921, Page 24

Selected Poetry

Nature's Thanksgiving Sweet rhapsodist, to whom the serenade. That, day-long, thou dost from unwearied throat ''our forth in treble of thy woodland note, Amid the leaf-gloom singing unafraid; To whom, upborne from censers flowers have made, Floats incense skywards where the sun's gold boat Oars westward in the blue to lands remote; To whom smile fields their thanks for summer's aid? Unthinking questions; yet how seldom seen A church door open; temples everywhere Stand dark and silent that for God were meant; Nature alone gives thanks; in pious mien Early and late with song and thurifer She kneels in adoration, lowly bent. —J. R. Clemens, in America. The Great Seducer Who looks too long from this window At the gray, wide, cold sea, Where breakers scour the beaches With fingers of sharp foam Who looks too long through the gray pane At the mad, wild, bold sea, Shall sell his hearth to a stranger And turn his back on home. Who looks too long from his window, Tho' his wife waits by the fireside, At a ship's wings in the offing, At a gull's wings on air. Shall latch his gate behind him. Tho' his cattle call from the by reside, And kiss his wife, and leave her, And wander everywhere. Who looks too long in the twilight, Or the dawnlight or the moonlight, Who sees an anchor lifted And hungers past content, Shall pack his chest for the world's end, For alien sun —or moonlight, And follow the wind, sateless, To disillusionment! Cole Young Rice, in The Century. S?2

Two* Sewing The wind is sewing with needles of rain : With shining needles of rain It stitches into the thin Cloth of earth — In, in, in. (Oh, the wind has often sewed with me! — One, two, three.) Spring must have fine things To wear, like other springs. Of silken green the grass must be Embroidered. (One and two and three.) Then every crocus must be made ■So subtly as to seem afraid Of lifting color from the ground. x\nd after crocuses the round Heads of tulips, and all the fair Intricate garb that Spring will wear The wind must sew with needles of rain, With shining needles of rain "Stitching into the thin Cloth of earth — In, in, in— For all the springs of futurity. / (One, two, three.) " Hazel Hall, in Current Opinion.

A ivream n. i/icaiii It was fanned of unseen fires, The fires that chasten and smart, Of my seared soul's white flame, And the red flame of my heart. Of the fierce white heat of youth And the glow of its passion fire Youth, the Dreamer, who fashions And colors the Heart's Desire. With dead dreams half forgot The living ore was wrought, Till it shaped itself in my heart, *' Took form, and come forth —a. thought it burned as a star in the dark, In its travail hour of birth, As a. diamond deep in the womb Of the fruitful red-brown earth. Like the rhythm of joyous sound, Like a gleam of tremulous light, It fell on men's wond'ring ears, 'lt glowed and sang in their»sight. • They pondered it o'er and o'er, They sundered it part from part, The song that was half my soul, The word that was all my heart. '•'He has lost the clue," they said — "The clue and the golden key." Rut it—it was all my life For it came from the soul of me. —Cathal o'Byrne, in the Irish World.

Light=Foot GREEN TATTERS. Green tatters flung to every wind, Swinging from the crooked arms of walnuts, Flying from the storm-tops of maples, Every poplar a-flutter With green and silver, Bending, bending, bending. When did it happen? When were these green tatters Flung out to every wind When did the new grass Go blazing over the hills? Who can remember ... When the sky was heavy with bare branches? Who can remember Any day not filled with green and silver Bending, bending, bending? RUNNERS. Moonseed and honeysuckle Running along old walls Fling out bare arms, bend down a peach tree, And so clamber Out into the roadside, To loaf in the deep grass, Curl about blackberry canes And shake down storms of white petals. Away and away, following A lazy mud-road, Oat between the tumbled fences, Out among the pastures. \-~ Oh runner,?, Let me go with you, Let mo clamber over an old wall, And breaking through blackberry canes, Let me follow you Barefoot along a thick roadside, Away and away. . ' ! Wait for me, I am coming, Moonseed and honeysuckle I Bernard Raymund, in the Nation and Athenaeum.