Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 5, 4 February 1925, Page 32

Selected Poetry

0 MATER. DULCTS. In Nazareth, I’d peep some day, To learn your rare unwonted way To watch you, with your boy at play, Dulce ridin. At eve I’d love to linger too, Hearing old mysteries made new, To learn true pondering from you Dulce loquentem. Ami dare T ask that it might bo My grace to feel awake in me That love, which held thee by the tree, Duke dolentcm? —Sister Grace, R.S.U., in America. Y THERE IS A LADY SWEET AND KIND. There is a lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind; I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die. • Her gesture, motion, and her smiles, Her wit, her voice my heart beguiles, Beguiles my heart, 1 know not why. And yet I love her till 1 die. Cupid is winged and doth range, Her country so my love doth change; But change she earth, or change she sky, Yet will I love her till I die. —From . Thomas Ford’s Music of Sundry Kinds , 1607. ** TO AN UNKNOWN ANCESTOR. My gifts have come to me far lown the years; I am the son of huntsmen of old time, The heir of timid virtue and of crime, Offspring of sluggards and of pioneers, Inheritor of juggled hopes and fears. Some gave me purity, some gave the grime Of damaged souls. Some of them helped my climb Toward God. From some came smiles, from others tears. Oh, I am cluttered up with legacies Long lines of jumbled blood have handed down, * Yet I thank, God noon my bended knees , For him who, whether king or bawdy clown, By making sympathy his conscious art, Bequeathed the gift of kindness to my heart, r—S. Omar Barker, in the Stratford Monthly Y PRAYERS. God, Who created me Nimble and ligl.it' of limb, In three elements free, To run, to ride, to swim; Not when the sense is dim, Bui now from the heart of joy, 1 would remember Him: Take the thanks of a boy.

Jesu, King and Lord, Whose are my foes to fight, Gird me with Thy sword, Swift and sharp and bright. Thee would I serve if I might, And conquer if I can ; From day-dawn till night, Take the strength of a man. Spirit of Love and Truth Breathing in grosser clay, The light and flame of youth, Delight of men in the fray, Wisdom in strength’s decay; From pain, strife, wrong to be free, This best gift I pray, Take my spirit to Thee. —Henry Charles Beeching, in An Anthology of Modern Terse. 5? A [AGISTER. LINGUISTICS. (Prize poem awarded by the Leache Memorial Association.) His feet became too feeble for the stair And so they found him out a lower room Where academic clatter never came Along the musty academic hall And set up there his tall, discolored desk Beside the blackboard. There lie sat and taught His group of meek, stoop-shouldered graduates, Mouthing the accents of a dozen tongues Ami writing out their symbols on the board: The Indo-European root stands thus' . . . Whence came the Sanskrit . . . so. the Latin ... so; And next by consonantal change we have It thus . . . the Old High German and the Norse; To-day a word or two sums up the tale In common talk. . .” Slowly his palsied hands, Like twisted roots of dwarfed, storm-riven trees That clutched the blackened, prehistoric soil When once the Gothic hunter shook his spear And Attila lashed forth his Huns to war, Traced characters uncouth, dark roots of words, And from the fragments of forgotten speech Drew mystic laws of language, setting up His letters, like tin soldiers, in a row Invincible to ordinary minds. The continent had left its double mark Upon him, in a heavy knotted scarf Ami high, stiff collar, with the wings turned np. (Stylo of old Leipzig and of Heidelberg) And in the faded wrinkle of a scar Along Ids chin, from student-duel days Before the classroom corner was bis throne. He faced the sunset through his latter years As nigged as a cloistered Gothic tower .Above some weather-grey monastic shrine The niche red old books of learned lore, Long treasured, till the archway crumbled in V here time crept under, gnawing at the - stone. — Francis Mason, in the Lyric.

V PROMISE. 13c not so desolate Because-thy dreams have flown, And the hall of the heart is empty ( And silent as stone, >--• ~ ■ As ago left by children Sad and alone. Those delicate children, ~>- Thy dreams, still endure. All pure and lovely things Wend to the Pure. Sigh not. Unto the fold Their way was sure. Thy gentlest dreams, thy frailest, Even those that were Born and lost in a heart beat, Shall meet thee there. They are become immortal In shining air. The unattainable beauty, The thought of which was pain, That flickered in eyes and on lips And vanished, again That fugitive beauty Thou shalt attain. Those lights innumerable That led thee on and on, The Masque of Time ended, Shall glow into one That shall be with thee for ever, Thy travel done. — M , in the Irish Statesman. V THE LOVERS. Years passed like chinking organs in the street, orinding for coppers their eternal dance; It seemed to him and her there was no chance That they might ever meet; A few words long ago they had to say, A 100k —a flower pressed into a hand — And then, along the horizon of the land The light poured out and fiercely died the day. Now, in the night, they sat, each one apart, While the years, trundling their organs, ground together A dreary riotous dance, that in grey weather Wakened the same old ache within each heart. Under the touch of time, thin wrinkles fell And tightened round their eyes. Now they were old. Bark, bitter ashes in a cup of gold Was all the past. The present was slow hell. Yet, ere they died, they were once more united As two stars rushing to destroy each other; The thickening crust of years no more could ■ smother Their hearts —the horizon rose and was uplighted Brief faded out before their final bliss That rose to birth out of the lonely places, They had passed over an immense abyss ~;yA And the pale light of the dawn smote on h* 'feheir faces. : , —John Gould Fletcher, in The Lyric. •. A