Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 27, 12 July 1923, Page 28

Selected Poetry

m . * Shakspere Because, the singer of an age, he sang The passions of the ages, It was humanity itself that leaped To life upon his pages. »•» • He told no single being's —he forced All beings to his pen. And when he made a man to walk the street Forth walked a million men. Agnes Lee, in Faces and Open Boars. Thomas des Anglais Sleep, in this forest plot, Unknown for ever. Though France forgetteth not Your last endeavor, Your own shall find the spot Never, ah, never! Sun on the forest wide, But not for your seeing, Nor how down each green ride Red deer go fleeing. Bright youth, a martyr, died, France, in thy freeing. Boyhood's scarce conscious breath Cheerfully given— None to record each death, How each had striven — Greater love no man hath This side of Heaven. —Hagak Paul, in the Poetry Review. *F Again Fiesole Fiesole !The Stadium, the blue sky Above me, as it was that Sabbath year We spent beside the Arno. —You were by The days I lingered here! \ t .From here we saw the orchards blooming white, The almond blushing, and the vines in bands Clasping the slim young tree boles left and right, As if they held their hands. The gray old olive-trees that heaving fill ,The rough and stony hollows by the road, Stooped to the quarry underneath the hill, Where oxen felt the goad. 'Round the blue hills we let our vision run, . Vagrant our speech, as wandering minstrels roam ; So, oft we lingered till the setting sun Touched the cathedral's dome. We watched the curled river in the dusk, Saw.lights spring out like jewels on its brim; Before we wandered down, we breathed the musk Of pale primroses dim. Fiesole!—From here we saw the beam Of Fin's; candles that she set to say Their homely tale of fruit and cakes and cream That waited by the, way.

Our little room close by the river's marge!. What held it not of learned things and sweet? So little! clasping close a love iio large It scarce seemed meet! - - To-day the little room is desolate. Straining my heart, these shadowy memories pass; No little room, no lighted candles wait;— "Man is as grass." Marie E. Richard, in Scribner's.' ■ <f ' • Spring and the Angel I. It was that time of year when green things grow As if by grace, all over the jubilant earth; That time of budding tree, ascending grass And fragrant lanes when hawthorn blossoms break, And orchards first put on their delicate tints. April! Another April over the land, » With soft rains summoning the laggard troops Of hyacinths and early primroses. April! with birds that call from blowing branches The news that heaven has kissed the waking earth, And roused to sudden rapture beauty that slept. How diligent the army of the flowers! In beautiful battalions, lo! I saw Their ranks of colored uniforms appear And march in splendor clown the singing hills. 11. Now who could weary of the budding boughs, Though thrice ten million stretched their flowery arms, As if to bless the earth? There was in heaven An angel who leaned down when Spring had come, As if to drink the perfume of the world In one long draught, so eager was his soul j For the old wonder that he knew when life Upon the hills was one long cry of youth. The streets of jasper and of fabled pearl, High golden gates and fields of asphodel Were wearisome to him. The storied towers Filled him with langor. "Lord, I crave the Spring The earthly Spring that wakens now below, And I would fare to woods grown green again, To river banks where mosses kiss the water, And shy birds call when sap begins to run. I hunger for the lost delight that poured In sunlight on one dear remembered hill. I pine for the scent of lilacs wet with rain; Oh, I am homesick for the fragrant earth!" 111. Then God released him from the shining streets, And straightway down the stairway of the sun This anxious spirit fled, and softly reached, (Unknown to man), the meadows of the world. He took bright highways when the cup of noon Was overflowing with pale loveliness. And when the slow, still mornings, white with peace, Made his heart ache that such a time could be, This angel moved, unseen, by orchard walls, And leaned to watch the grass break through the ground. He sped through gardens when the moonlight drenched The earliest buds with clean cascades of beauty; And when the April stars hung in the sky, He was a ghost that sighed with joy, being home After so long a pilgrimage in heaven. IV. We wondered why the Spring was doubly dear On certain days and nights. We did not know That one from all the sources of high things Had breathed a special blessing on the grass, . And touched each flower before it opened wide/ — A truant angel y whose great wings had/brushed " j , The emerald hills, and, happy, disappeared! —Charles Hanson Towne, in The Broohman, « I-'