Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, 17 November 1921, Page 24

Selected Poetry

...-.=* Connemara The wind in Connemara is soft and light and low, 111 make away at dawn of day and speed me westward ho! Across the Connacht border a wanderer I'll be — The wind in/Connemara is calling, calling me. The sky o'er Connemara is blue and dappled o'er With fleecy clouds like silver shrouds on some enchanted shore; .-. The grey mist rising, rising above the red sunset—• ' That sky o'er Connemara is-heaven's parapet! * The homes of Connemara are scattered far and few, The incense sweet of burning peat as fresh as morning dew; The wide Atlantic waters have reap'd a harvest rare From lonesome Connemara—o Connemara fair! God's sun on Connemara is shining, shining down; With gentle showers of vanish'd hours the earth is warm and brown; And daylight dies reluctant to quit that land divine; 0 lovely Connemara ! 0 Connemara mine I The wind in Connemara is soft and light and low, I'll make away at break of day and steer me westward ho! I'll cross the plains of Leinster and face me toward the sea— The wind in Connemara is calling, calling me. —Cathal Lally, in the Irish World. Lament of a Man for His Son Son, my son! ■ ' \ I will go up to the mountain; There I will light a fire for the feet of my son's spirit. And there I will lament him, Saying, Oh, my son, - s What is my life to me now you are departed? "" Son, my son, In tho dark earth We softly laid thee, In the chief's robe, In warrior's gear. Surely, there, On the Spirit Road, Thy deeds are walking. Surely, The corn comes to the ear again. But I, here, I am the stalk the reapers left standingSon, my son, ( .What is my life to me now you are departed? —Translated by Mary Austin, in Harper's Magazine, Antitoxins When'psychoanalysis vexes ■ The feminine novelist's heart And she thinks the discussion of sex is • The ultimate, triumph of Art, I return to the simple romances » v)i ante- f";_4.„„;„.„ Jane, » t Or I find a" new charm in the fancies ■'> Of Cranford again. .> •

When the decadent Georgian poet Composes unmusical tosh, -f .-*. > And importunes the public—to show it The linen he sends to the wash, : \- I reflect that, unmoved by the ages,The mighty are still in their seats, And take comfort once more from the pages s . Of Cowper or Keats. If the twentieth-century flapper My sense of what's fitting annoys With the garments that weirdly enwrap her, Her glances and dances and "boys," From her manners and modes (which are shady) I get some relief when I dine ' With a really delightful old lady f Of seventy-nine. v - —By an Old Fogy, in Punch. Duetto: Summer The wind when the stars awaken, The place where at dawn you stood Here where the stream is shaken In silver folds through the wood, All are now as they once were, Color and cloud and sound: The iris starts from the ground: Nothing is new but my heart 0 heart! Nothing is old but my heart. Noon; and the corn-flower starring The warm deep green of the grass, And the shadow of lupin barring The shadow of clouds that pass. Day is a drowsy faring, " Purple and rich with bees : ,Clover is ripe to my knees: Nothing is old but my heart; 0 heart! v Nothing is new but my heart. High on the hills the aspen Turn in their luminous arc; Whisper with dusk and soften As the moments move to the dark: Stir in their pinioned running, Turn in the luminous wind: The moments turn in my mind: Nothing is new but my heart; 0 heart! Nothing is old but my heart. 11. In all still places, Places in the hills, Small winds ripple, go rippling through the grass, And the shadow of the hours, And the shadow of the flowers, Ripple with the moments as the warm days pass, In all high countries, and valley starred, Lichened slopes are warm to smell, and juniper and fir; In the cups between the rocks Carrots grow on sturdy stalks, And columbine and Never-Die and fireweed occur. In all mountain meadows, High above the fields, Noon is filled with silence, infinite, and wise; Cool and blessed lapse of sound, Never & murmur, save around : ' • Green and hidden 'hollows where the clear streams rise. —Maxwell S-truthers Burt, in Scribner's Magazine. .....