THE DEAD FOLK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 230, 28 September 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DEAD FOLK.

I walked among the dead folk, on a mad autumn day, The gold leaves pouring round me, rifled treasures flung away— "They're quiet here," (I thought) "they'll say what I might do with life—Gertrude, Gratian, Patrick and Iveziah. his wife."

I thought, "You'll teach my heart to do the ordered things it's told, Little, dear Katilda, who was two years four months old." But her snowdrops shook their skirts out, and I heard a baby cry For the long-forgotten whisperings of her lullaby.

I walked among the dead folk, and dusk pined through the trees. A rose and I, none other, bent our hearts to these —- And the white rose petals scattered In a snowstorm to the grass, For the the dead remember perfumes—they near the steps that pass.

I hoped perhaps they'd gift me with a wraith of quietude (I brought them everlastings, rain-splashed, and still I stood). But Ann and Pierce would ask me If their lads had come to harm, If the bright gorse shone to mock them, on Wild Apples Farm.

One word I spoke of loving—Robert was twenty-four, When Life said she didn't want him for her lover any more. He remembers yellowing grasses, and the unseen shadowed breast Of the silver girl who flew him like a wild swan to the nest.

Don't walk anions the dead £olk if you're spent with hurt or shaine— Their long, thin cry burns upwards like a crocus Hume— And they're always dreaming firelight, and the ways of man and wife. For you needn't think the dead folk will have done with Life. —UOUIN HYDE. Auckland.