BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1509, 3 August 1912, Page 9

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

VERSES OLD AND NEW. INSURRECTION. I I will go down to tho quay.where the ships are lying, For my soul is sick for the seas that are never still; , .The great green combers ahiss with the x ' i'oam and the crying Of souls of men who wont out to drink their fill Of battle and lust and blood when tho world was youug, Singing aud sighing among the topsails tall, i "Oh, Life is n bubble, and death and tho • sea end all!"

The cold blue stars and a moon low down on the sea-lino Shall light mo away from the towns and tho kennels of men, Tho heaving road that I know, as straight as a bee-line, To tho place whoro'l can heal my sick soul again; Where lifo is cheap and tho word and the blow are one, Where red lips sniilo though the hearts that own them are hating, And a man's lifcblood is tho price of a man's mating.

I will go down to the sea and so to my true love. I will look in tho eyes of danger and know no fear. \ For, oh, I am sick of tho arms of this my new love, The red-brick stroets where men sell their souls for gear! Tho purple wino of tho sea is poured for my drinking, j And.the voices are calling among tho topmasts tall,' !"Oh, Life is a bubble, and death and the sea end all!" -C. J. Kirk. A WATCHWORD OF THE FLEET. For purposes of recognition at night a small squadron of Elizabethan ships, crossing tho Atlantic, adopted as a watchword the sentence—"Before tho world—was God." ' They • diced with Death; their big seaboots Were greased with blood; they swept the seas For England; and—wo reap the fruits Of their heroic devilries! Our creed is in tho cold machine, The inhuman devildoms of brain, Tho bolt that splits the midnight main, Loosed at a ; levers touch; tile lean Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power"; The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array I Yet . . . we that keep the conning tower Are not so strong as th'ev Whose watchword wo disdain.

They laughed at odds for England's sake! We count, yet cast our strength away. One Admiral with the soul of Drake

Would break the fleets of hell to-day! Give us the splendid heavens of youth, Giro ns the banners of deathless name,

The ringing watchwords of their fame,| The faith, the hope, the simple truth! Then shall tho Deop indeed be swayed Through, all its boundless breadth and length, - Nor this pround England lean dismayed On twenty miles of strength, Or shrink from aught but shame. Pull out by nigh't, o.leave tho shore And lighted-streets of Plymouth town,. Pull out into the Deep once,more! There, in tho night of their renown, The samo great waters roll their gloom Around our midget period; .. ■, \ And the huge deeks .that Ealeigh trod • Over our .petty darkness loom!. Along the line the cry is passed From all their heaven-illumined spars, Clear as a bell, from mast to mast, It rings against the stars— . "Before the world—was God." —Alfred Noyes. A FANCY. ■ ■ • The Queen of Bessarabia Was'thinking of a thing Wfcereon both queens and other folk Are often'pondering. She looked from out her chamber,' ~ And thought she did not know / From where she had been wafted, ,- And whither she would go. What was the uso of living, Of work or love or strife? When nobody could answer Tho question, "What is-Life?" Those Bessarabian-poplars , Were bending to the breeze, And with a melancholy brow She glanced upou tho trees'. •One moment they were moving. Tho next were standing still. She wondered why their sergeant . Invented such a drill. —Henry Baerlein. ON A DEAD CHILD. Man proposes. God in His time disposes. And so I wandered up to where you lay" A.little rose among the little roses, And no moro dead than they. It seemed your childish foot were tired of straying, Tou did not greet me from your'flowerstrew;! bed, Yet still I knew thatyouwere only playing.- _ . Playing nt .being dead. -. . ". I might have, thought that yon weTe really sleeping,; ; " '■- ■ ' ■ * So quiet lay your eyelids to tho sky, So still; your hair,'but surely you were peeping, ...... And so I did not cry. God knows,, and in His proper timo dis- ., poses, . ';, And so I,.smiled and gently called your nam,e, 'Added my rose to your sweet heap of roses, And left you to your game. ' —Richard Middleton.