CURRENT WAR POETRY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 245, 13 October 1917, Page 13

CURRENT WAR POETRY.

THE RESTORED NAVAL OFFICER (Written for the superannuated men who have been brought back from the retired to the active list.) They commissioned him a trawler with a high and raking bow. Black nnd workmanlike as any pirate craft. With a crew of steady seamen very handy In a row, And n brace of Uttle barkers fore and aft. And he blessed the Lord his Maker when he faced the North Sea sprays And exceedingly extolled his lucky star That had given his youth renewal in the evening of his days (With the rank of Captain Dugout, K.N.R.). He is as jolly as a sandboy, he Is happier than a king. And his trawler is the darling of his heart (With her cuddy like a cupboard where a kitten couldn't swing. And a smell of flsh that simply won't depart!; He has found upon occasion sundry targets for his gun; He could tell you tales of mine and submarine: Oh, the holes he's in and out of and the glorious risks he runs Turns his son—who's In a superdreadnought—green. He Is lit as any fiddle; he is hearty, hale, and fanned: He is proof against the coldest gales that blow: He has never felt so lively since he got his first command (Which is rather more than forty years ngol: And of all the joyful picnics of his wild and wandering youth— Little dust-ups from Taku to Zanzibar— There was none to match the picnic, he declares in sober sooth. That he has as Captain Dugout, R.N.B. —C.F.S.. In "Punch." REPATRIATED. "Tears. Pierrot? Tears, my joyous one?" 'Look, comrade — all tec had is gone!" "Another year the vines will pay. . .*• "The very soil is burned away!" "Jean will replant it. Where Is he?' "Killed in the fighting by the Lys." "Jean dead! Then Francois. . ." "Francois lien raving. A shell tore o::t his eyes." "Hopeless?" "Vay — rather call him blest I lie icill not know about Celeste." "Is she so crushed, then, by his fall?" "Ifother 0/ C.od! If that icerc all. . ." —Charles Buxton Going, in "Everybody's Magazine,"