BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1108, 22 April 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW. primavera. The Spring is whispering temptingly, ■ melodiously, distractingly, "Come, leavo your Northern miseries, coiuo' South, and meet the sun with \ me. \ "Come, climb the snowy "bastions,- that ' guard the plain of LomLavdy. ; L'ook long from Duomodossola, then loiter down through Italy, To find beneath Fiesole, new crowned with '. laughing foliage',. Mid ditches .blub'with irises, the City of , the Medici." : / The song comes, more enticingly, the visions rise; alluringly,— , Eome, Parma, and. Perugia, Ravenna, , Lucca, Kiinini— The country-sid9 of Tuscany, now purple , with anemones, , - The'.water-falls of Tivoli, the gently swaying "gondola. The-Siren sings relentlessly, alas! the ■ Fates are obdurate.: , I close my ears reluctantly; but my heart's gone to Italy. ,; —"L.E.W.," in the "Westminster." SUMMER .AFTERNOON. Not all the wasteful beauty of the year Heaped in the scale of one consummate ■ • hour ;,'•. Shall this outweigh: the curve of quiet . air. j' • , : ■-.■■ That hold, as'in the green sun-fluted ■ light . :. Of se(i-caves quivering in a tidal lull, Those tranced towers and long, uiiruined; ■ walls, '-. ■ Moat-girdled-'from' the world's dissolving touch, •' • , Tho rook-flights lessening over evening woods,'' And, down' the unfrequented grassy slopes, The shadows'of old.oaks contemplative Beaching behind them like tho; thoughts yt age.',. ' ( High oyerhead hung' the long Sussex ' ridge;'- • ■ 'SUn-biutured, as a beaker s'nm of gold '■■ Curves,; round' its green concavity; and 'slow "' ' ■ 'Across the upper pastures of the sky ' Tho clouds moved white before the hording airs That in the hollow, by the moated walls, Btirred not. one sleeping lily from its sleep. ■> . Deeper.' the hush fell; more remote the earth Fled onward with the flight of cloud and sun, And cities strung' upon the flashing reel Of nights, and days. We knew no more of these Than tho gray towers redoubling in the moat . The image of a bygone strength transformed .• To beauty's endless uses; and like them We felt the touch of 'that renewing power That turns the landmarks of man's ruined toil To liigh star-haunted leservoirs of peace. And with that sense there came the deeper senso Of moments that, between the beats of time, May- thus inspire in some transcendent air The plenitude of being. '■— Edith Wharton, in "Scribner's. I DATS THAT HAVE. BEEN. Can I forget'the .'sweet' days that have, been, Whori poetry first began to warm my blood;; • "'« if \\ « i i When from-the hWof Gwent iknWthe; earth . •., , Burned into two by . Severn's silver, flood? ; When I- would go alone at'night to see The Moonlight, like a big .white Butterfly, Dreaming on that old castle near Caerleon— While at its side the Usk went softly by. Whenl would stare at lovely clouds in Heaven. Or \rnteli' them when reported by deep streams; When feeling pressed like thunder, but would not Break into that grand music of my dreams. Can I forget tho sweet days that have k-en." Tli!' villages so green, I have been in: Llanlarnam, Magor, Malpas, and Llanwern, Liswcry, old Caerleon, and Alteryn? Can I forget the banks of Malpas Brook, Or Ebbw's voice insuch a wild'delight, As on he dashed with pebbles in his throat, Guralin? towards the sea with all his might? Ah, when I see a kyify village now, I sisih. and ask it-for Llantarnam's green; I ask each river where is Ebbw's voiceIn memory of the sweet days that have been. —William H.Davies, in the "Nation."