BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1144, 3 June 1911, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW* .PENANCE.. Sometimes it seems to mo tho sea must With 0 the vast loneliness its great heart knows— Its ,mighty beat, its. thundering surge and sway . Lost in the empty spaces, in tho dark Of desolate nights unpiorced by any star. On coasts .forlorn it sheds its tears in vain; Up storm-swept crags it sweeps with joy, and then Falls back to sob in tho old, terrible way. Who knows but that, for all the voiceless dead Tho sea has giasped and hidden in its heart, It now must pay with this wild loneliness; l Must beat forever on far solitudes Of,rock and ruin and unresponsive isles, And sing, colossal • sinner of the world, 'An endless chant for its unending crimes? —Charles Hanson Towne, in the "Pathfinder." REQUIEM OF ARCHANGELS FOR THE . , WOULD. Hearts, beat no more! Earth's Sleep has come! All iron stands her wrinkled Tree, The streams that sang are stricken dumb, The snow-flake fades into tho sea. Hearts, throb no more! your time is past! Thousands of years for this pent field Yo have done battle. Now at last The flags may sink, the captains yield. Bleep, ye great Wars, just or unjust! Sleep takes.the gate and none defends. Soft on your craters' firo and lust, Civilisations,. Sleep' descends! Time it is, time to cease carouse! Lot the nations.and their noise grow - dim! . Let'the lights wano within the. house And darkness cover, limb by limb! Across your passes, Alps and plains A planetary vapour flows, 'A last invader, and enchains The vine, tho woman, and the rose. Sleep, Forests old! Sleep in your beds, Wild-muttering Oceans and dark Wells! Sleep be upon your shrunken heads, Blind everlasting Pinnacles! Sleep now, ye great, high-shining Kings, Your torrent glories, snapt in death. jleep, simple'men—sunk water springs And all tho ground Man laboureth. Sleep, Heroes, in your mountain walls— The trumpet shall not sound again; And ranged on misty pedestals Sleep now, ,0 sleepless Gods of men. Nor lift up your unfathomed orbs! These troubled clans that mako and mourn (Some heavy-lidded Cloud absorbs And thoflulling snows of the Unborn. The Earth lies cold. Then, stooping Night, lay' forth the limbs and shroud the scars, lnd bid with chanting to the rite The torches of thy train of stare! —Herbert Trench. A SATIRE OF CIRCUMSTANCE. The kettle descants in a. cosey drone, ind the young wife looks in her husband's face, 'And/; then at her guest's, and.shows in h'er own ' , <„, r .-, Herf/sense- that she'fills"'an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And. says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife docs not knowThat tho woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not bo so. . . . Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling nnd sios her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly. —Thomas Hardy, in the "Fortnightly."