BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1168, 1 July 1911, Page 10

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW. "BRIEF LIFE." Ho came with tho wind of dawn, whei rose-red clouds were Hying; ' In tho glory of his coming the old worlc drifted dim. He went when the evening star outwatched day's quiet dying; His path upon the sea made a white straight road for him. Did he dream a radiant dream in some wistful place supernal? Did ho hear the liuman call, follow and , loso his way! Has the touch of earth on tho child mado strange to him things eternal! Is he heir to sorrow ami love, being mortal for ouo swift day? —Sophie Jewett, in "Poems," NAPOLEON, "Behold the Cause!" he answered, and I sawAll motionless, upon a frozen Alp, "With dreary stare and hands behind him clasped, Tho Corsican who shook and lost' the world. . , . Then, as he spoke, slow flakes began to fall, And white in his own dreams the Emperor stood, Roofed by tho purple vault of his own mind, And glassed upon a glacier of tho soul, Rut when the dreamy storm had ceased to ! fall,. • ■. , Then I perceived how many others stood Around him, Marshals, Captains, soldiers ' old, Comrades of many battles of the Earth. . . Now falling pyramids I seemed to see, And toppling cities,-, fire, • and burning towns, Whirlwinds of cavalry, storms of spears, and heard ■'~■■' Trumpets and neighing, drums, cannon, and cries. ... •:. . '' How good to hear the patter of earthly rain, ,- "'.-..,. After that silent arctic of the soul; Noises of summer dawn and far away . A sweet monotony of creeping seas! —Stephen Phillips (fronr "The New Inferno"). ,- THE LION. I met a Lion in the way; Heigho! his eyes were wild! A bright, magnificent beast of prey, ~. A daemon's child. He scowled, and scowled, With bristling mane, And growled and growled Like an angry pain. He stood aloof: 1 liked him well. . Heigho! his ivories! His lips were curled, and his smilo was fell: His breath steamed hot as the hate of hell, Hot from the heart of hell. . . . His lithe mass, rhythmic as a wave, Sank rigid, to a passion wrought; He seemed some splendid sin, a brave Embodiment of treacherous thought. . . I had nor lance, nor any spear, ■ But a palm twig; No doubt had I, nor any fear: I stepped the gorgeous creature near And plucked his wig. . . . I tumbled the great tangled brute; His smelling brightness spurned; my foot I planted oil his flabby mouth: Prone lay he like a beast in a drought. . . The morrow-morn a man in arms

Fate that way drew; His life was sick with his soul's harms, And him tho Lion slew. f-James A. Mackereth, in "A Son of Cain." SONNET. foh! something 'less than words, and something more . ' I'd need .if I would write for you; the spell That bids the wandering sounds in concord soar ■And opens wide the gates of. Heaven am* ■ Hell.- ■ ■ Then would I write you the sad melody, That only tells a loneliness forlorn It found in the dark heart where it was born, Yet speaks the groaning world's whole misery. Rising, it shakes the burden from its wings; It soars triumphant to the sky and sings. The veil is rent; tho clouds arc scattered far. The rising soul was one with floods of Hgbt, And swam within that stillness infinite, Constant, eternal, one with every star. —Maurice Baring, in "Collected Teems."