ESSAYS IN VERSE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 121, 23 May 1914, Page 13

ESSAYS IN VERSE

HISTORY. "Pa6fc is tho past/ But no, it is not past; In ue, in us, it quickens, wants, aspires; And on our heads tho unknown Dead have cast Tho hungers and the thirste of their desires. Unknown the pangs, the peace wo too prepare .' .What shakes this bosom shall reverberate Through ages unconceived ; but in dark lair Th© unguessed, unhoped, undroaded issues wait. Our pregnant acts are all unprophesiod. We dream sublime conclusions ; destine, plan, Build and unbuild ; yet turn no jot aside Tho something infinite that moves in man. We write The End where fate has scarce begun; And no man knows the thing that he has done. —Laurence Binyon. Oxford and Cambridge Review. THE COUNTRY GODS. I dwell with all things great and fair; The green earth ancTthe lustral air, Tho sacred spaces of the sea, Day in, day out, companion me. Pure-faced, purc-thoughted folk are mine With whom to sit and laugh and dine; In every sunlit room is heard Love singing, like an April bird, And everywhere tho moonlit eyes Of beauty guard our Paradise; While, at the ending of the day, To. the kind country gods we pray, And dues of our fair living pay. Thus, when, reluctant, to the town I go, with country sunshine brown, So smaJl and strange all seems to me^— I, the boon-fellow of the 6ea — That these townspeople say and be: Their insect lives, their inseofc talk, Thoir busy little insect walk, Their busy little inseot Btings^ — And all the while the seaweed swing* Against the rock, and the wide roar Rises foam-lipped along the shore. Ah ! then how good my life I know, How good it is each day to go Where the great voices call, and whore The eternal rhythms flow and flow. In that august companionship, The subtle poisoned words that drip, With guileless guile, from friendly lip, The ho that flits from ear to ear, Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear ; Nor shall you fear your heart to say, Lest he who listens shall betray. The man who harkens all day long To tho sea's cosmic-thoughted song Comes with purged ears to lesser speech, And something of the skyey reach Greatens the gaze that feeds on space : The starlight writes upon his face That bathes in starlight, and tho morn Chrisms with dew, when day is born, The eyes that drink tho holy light Welling from* the deep springs of night. And so— how good to catch the train. >> Back to tho country gods again. —Richard L© Gallienne. "The Lonely Dancer." THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a email cabin build there, of olay and wattles made; Nino bean- rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket singe, There midnight's all a-glimmor, and noon a purple glow, And evening's full of the linnet's wing. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. —William Butler Yeats. BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD. Beautiful lie the dead; Clear comes each feature Satisfied not to be, Strangely contented. ' Like ships the anchor dropped, Furled overy sail is; Mirrored with all their masts In a deep water. — Stephon Phillips. "Lyrice and Dramas."