VERSES OLD AND NEW.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 282, 22 August 1908, Page 12

VERSES OLD AND NEW.

■ THE MIDDLE MARCHES. ("Posuit finee tuos pacom."—Psalm xlvii.) No Warden keeps the marches : t From Tynedale to tho Tweed; *■ Broad winds the road to Scotland Beside the streams of Eede. Here, where some flaming- roof-tree Leaped red-tongued to the sky, About thß-grass-grown ruins The nesting lock-doves fly. Here, where speor-drivon cattle Splashed deep to) taste the cool, Only the quick-winged dipper Startles the quiet pool. TTnwatclied, your flocks, 0 shepherds, Feed safe o'er many a field: .With red-brown bracken rusted Hangs Cheviot's dinted shield. Plough, husbandman, long furrows, Fling, sower, undismayed, In groves of birch and alder Tweed sheathes his steel-bright blade. ; — From the "Speotator." i •—■—- ' 'A'rSONG OF SEMIKAMIS. iWho hath loved Qtieen Semiramis, Thase many years by visions led, ' iWho hath desired her mouth to kiss, ' A lotas-blossom, amorous, red; , He should have love for wine and bread, Loving her once in Babylon; ■ Her beauty shamed tho mounting sua— Semiramis the queen is dead. For wonder of Semiramis . ■All the brown world bent down with . dread, ; She was'a glorious queen, I wis, Splendid and shameful, all men said i Beauty she had in her soul's stead, Now'is her empery foredone, In Babylon the lizards run; Semiramis the. queen is dead.-

The splendour of Semiramis: Is sunken in a hollow-hed, . i For sound of lutes the serpents hiss, , Her olamorous lovers all are fled. None sitteth at her shrouded head: Of singing-girls she hath not one, ■Whispering joy, now joy is none: Semiramis; the quden ib dead. , —Ethel Talbot in "The Nation."

AH! JET CONSIDER. IT AGAIN. : Old things need not bo therefore true, 0 brother men, nor yet the new; Ah! still a while the old thought retain', And'yet consider it again ! Alas! tho great world goes its way, And takes its truth from each new day; They do not quit, nor yet retain, Ear less consider it again.' —Arthur Hugh Clough. THE HYPOCRITES. The church and tho school and the golden rule have reigned in the world so long. Men dare not slay in the olden way and practise the grosser wrong; So they make small use of the hangman's noose to put their enemies by . . They sell them wealth on paper writ; no more with weapons they thrust and hit; they . kill with the printed lie. . ■ 'But you, who\prey in a genteel way on folk, and juggle the truth, 'And with the specious-printed lie cast ruined thousands bare and high With neither . pity nor ruth-r Remember this as, you sell and bny: a death i ■ for a death the'soul must die, 'And the Law demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. . ►-Harry H. Kemp in the "American Magazine"