ITALY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 219, 16 September 1935, Page 6

ITALY.

OLD AND NEW.

LINES FOR AN UNKNOWN POET.

Write that I £nen> a river like ripened corn, A Ted libation of roses, poured by a marble sea. And around the gray stone wings, widespread at morn, The immemorial musing of Italy. And the waves beneath Venice were Yesterday in my heart, And the lion above St. Mark's my tawny brother . . ■ . I, Giuseppe, poet and nothing more, Knew from my birth one fear, none other. Fear of the sealed heart, fear of the song forespent In boasting: fear that less than the fire of Truth, Lit afar on the mountains, and sought by few. Temper the blade I would forge for youth. Yea, many a night the moon cried, "Woe unto thee. False shepherd! 11l doth thy lagging song requite My granted beauty!' . Under the ilex tree I lay: loveliness ached in the summer night. Till the dust in the temples of Time took flesh again And shone before me. Ihe deep-laid dust found words, Ancient wisdom .and pity, pardon and sacrifice. Fused with the clear call of the Campagna birds.

Born out of time, in an age untuned for song, I, that was brother to man, with restless feet Sought for my friends . . . for the girl s face, matching the dream in bronze, For the lit window, holy in the lonely street: And found but few, till the day in a market-square Ten thousand faces were one, lifted: and he . Spoke to the throng, with a voice like a tolling bell. Two words, "Follow," and "Italy." Taut stretched the drum of the sky. The man at i.iy side Cried, "Leader!" Light like a penlecosl of flames Ran over faces. Over hillside and heart Thudded the fierce pulse of the foreign names. Addis Ababa, Mareb, Magdala, Names on the wind, stronger than wine or laughter: Mouth to mouth cried them . . • Asmara, Addi Caie, And Adowa, Adowa, the sullen echo after. (Was she less great, my land, when her music swelled Pearl and argent, over the shores of the earth ? Winter and scribe. Cod's witnesses, seers of the saints. Were they of little worth?) On the road to the coast we passed a woman

in stone, With a stone babe drawing life from the fount of her breast. And the name at her feet Was Peace. Slilleved, she looked As the friend looks on the forth-faring guest .... "!s it well ye go?" I had thought, with a thousand tongues That patient gaze has cried to the human heart. ■'Ivi the god of War speaks once in his voice of steel. And the cleaving minds of men are sundered apart. Thus from a space of sea n>e came to a shore Where the rivers were rods for the back of a stubborn land, 'Vhere rearing its sling in fury against the sl/tcs A scorpion wind ran circled with flamegold sand. On our Wα)) to the hills We passed a woman like bronze. And a naked child sucked life from her naked breast. . . . the name in her eyes was Fear, and she. looked on us As the doomed look on the unhallowed guest.

Stone named Peace, woman of flesh named Fear, Did they crouch together, beyond the rampart hill That pent our gaze? Watchers and watched, beneath The rocks we lay, waiting the word to kdl. But or ever came glint of steel or rocket's flare, The dark was filled with the pest-wings, heavy and slow. 1, Giuseppe, poet and nothing more. Known not nor feared by the men named foe. Knew pain for a little: and much of quiet since. And a slinging song of sandgrains, that does not cease. . . . Being taken into the statelier company Of the peoples who dwell at peace. — Robin Hyde.