Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 8, 4 March 1925, Page 32

Selected Poetry

THE LARK. I saw a lark within the dawn, Rise, joyful, from his watery nest; The sunshine glittering on his breast, As swift he sped to hail the morn; And higher, higher, to the skies I watched the tender warbler rise Till in a blaze of living light He vanished from my clouded sight. If midst the cares that circle me, My soul might spread her languid wing, And into Heavenly grace should spring And like the bird, whose radiant flight Had led him far from earthly sight, Thus.soar above earth's sinful sod And journey closer to my God. —G. Thomas in the Irish World.

TO ROBERT BROWNING. A Japanese Appreciation, You are a smoking-room story-teller of the pageant of life seen by senses, Your gusto in speech turns your art into obscurity, Again from the obscurity into a valedictory: You are a provincialism endorsed by eccentric pride. You are sometimes riotous to escape from anarchism. Your great thirst for expression makes you a soul-wounding romancer, You often play the mystagogue, and appealer el. You are a glutton of colorful adventures. You are a troubadour serenading between the stars and Life, Your love song on a guitar torments us even physically: You are a realist who under the darkness purifies himself into the light of optimism ; You are a griffin wildly dancing on human laughter. —Yone Noguchi, in the English Review.

THE OLD WOMAN. She keeps her nook, sitting with folded hands And looking abroad with dim unquestioning Her heart grown strangely quiet and tolerant. She has learned patience: those she loved are gone, And youth is gone, and all the dreams of youth, And grief itself hath found its natural ending, And now she .feels there is no more to learn. Placid she sits gnarled simplicity, Not hills nor rocks more tranquil, and even as they She hears Time's marks upon her patiently. Hers is the sober wisdom of the years And now she waits for what she knows will come

Breathing the calmness of all quiet things, Twilight and silence and a heart at peace. —John Bunker in the Commonwealth (New York). iVA, THE LISTENERS. "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses . Of the forest's ferny floor; And a bord flew up out of the turret Above the Traveller's head. And he smote upon the door again a second time; "Is there anybody there?" he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. , And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder and lifted his head: "Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word," he said. Never the least stir made the listeuers, Thoug'i every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard.his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gene. —Walter de la Mare in An Anthology of Modern Verse.

EARTH MAGIC Fernando's eyes stare past you gray as rain, His body's limber as a bough and straight. You speak to him, he never seems to hear, And then he answers you a minute late. His gift—his father had the trick before him— Makes him a person in the country-side. Give him a forked stick, cherry or sweet apple, And he.can show you where ground waters hide. He lurches over our green hills and holds A fresh branch in his grimy, vise-shut fists, The fork straight up until the water's near, Then in his grasp its very fibre twists.

The high point swoops —Fernando stops and waits, r-^i Turns his stick up again and holds it fast! ' And when it answers to the water's call, ,• He nods and grins his weasel grin at"last. "Your spring's right here," he says, "sor/e eight foot down, I make it, though I ain't so good on knowing The depth as father.' He could always tell, But you dig here, and keep right on a-goin'." Magic so old, so simple, and so strange! To be the medium between a spring Deep underground and a bough's love of itTruth has sometimes an odd and pagan ring. And why Fernando? Scarce articulate ; As brooks and windy branches, one with these He speaks an older language when he tells The secrets he and earth know arid the trees. —Helen Ives Gilchrist in the New York Sun. s»#» "WHAT PORRIDGE HAD JOHN KEATS" Shaper of gold, in what mine of amazement Dug you the metal Time's acid eats not? Whence were the tests of your cunning appraisement— . Whispered from darkness and never .forgot? What was the mystery hid in the flame? Had you your greatness in real prevision? Spread you your wings for the pundits' derision — Babbling that beauty and truth are the same ? Some, supercilious, grant, as in pity, r Gaze to your treasure-house, blinking to see Starry great chalices, saying, " they're pretty." "* ' What had they said when the fluxSa was free ? Gold of the vein without trace of alloy! Some of us agonise, some of us fake it: Is it a wonder we never quite make it? What -was your secret, incredible boy? Silversmith, casting the nymphs and the dragons,— Artisan clever in gilding or glass, Hark to the tinkle of delicate flagons! Hark to the roar of the vessels of brass! Potter, with hands on your requisite clay. Tell of its uses, and we shall believe you; Still shall the custom of patrons deceive you, Dreaming your wares are for more than today. „

We that are given to problems alchemic, When the brain's crucible glows at the core, Frown to find genius is non-epidemic, Grieve that its riddle is not in the ore. Wanton of rule flows infinity's rhyme: / Whose shall protest when he sees the con": elusion ? ;•:; g Gold of the ingot and slag of the fusion! Gold of your star on-the heavens of Time! —George Sterling, in the New Republic.

Leader, p. 33. Notes, p. 34. Topics, pp. 22-23. Complete Story, p. 11. England’s Martyrs, p. 13. Church in N.Z., p. 19. Travel Notes (by J.K.), p. 25. Sunday Afternoon Readings, p. 51. Catholics and their Schools, p. 57. Canonisations, p. 29.