"TWENTY YEARS AGO"

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 96, 24 April 1935, Page 7

"TWENTY YEARS AGO"

He was my friend, and of the flower of our ,'outli. At long la3t consent Is given tor publicity to this his last word home. Permission to "edit" is not availed of—a touch might blunt the spontaneity and dim the bloom of the exalted mood. He loved his country well! The end he made subject of his prayer came, before Yprea, in April, 1915. That "Splendour over us" was surely a soul's questing after tho spiritual, without which all material life Is naught. Is it tho one lesson we are slow imcarn.ngst.il? BOKAID N . GOM >ON. 0 mother! Here are days and nights we know, Beyond all dreams of horror, if we looked— ~,.111 If it indeed were possible to lookOn life from one side only—such a life ■Vs that we lived together long ago ... . Dim centuries ... and yet but yesterday. ... * * « The wonder of it here, could I but tell! The terror, too, at times! Tor this :b LIFE, , . , Large*spelled and boldly writ: ana hand in hand With torn and lacerated death it goes.— Or waits—a greater valour still—benumbed, The shock of battle. ...■.' * » » Mother,-this I say, 1 would not miss ontf hour, not one small Of all it is and means. And yet I hear. Vague, faint, the rustling of the skirts of Fate. ... # * * ' We live thuswise: it seems as though a voice, , , Through all the tense winged scream ana crash of shells, Speaks bravely^ "Not for you—not yours And stutters "through the running rifle "Not yet— not yet-for you." But others Then gof a sudden, all the voices change. They have for me ... and so my own turn comes. . My turn for what? ... Oh, mother, lust to die. I have no fear, and that will make you Slad- . * ♦ The. voices spoke last night; and all I thouglW things my eyes shall see no No sorrow touched me, nor regret, nor I wandered in my dream on Seatoun The beacles' edged with morning blue Each shadow of each rock I loved so well I saw again: and then by Signal Hill I And down to where the breakers ofi Lyall Bay , Crooned softly, practising new chants at ease , , To yell, full-throated, in some gale to Sleepless^'yet dreaming,, thus I lived awhile » , With those I loved; m places that I loved. , Sleepless, I dreamed: and yet men do sleep here . . Boot-deep in oozing mud—for curtaining, The coloured flares, tinting the sodden sky. i • , *.. * * Oh, many a tale your/anxious eyes have read, , ,■. Born of the sordid-glory where men live So bedded, filthy! Tales the old home days >■ Would call soul-stimng. » . , * " * . *. Mother, it is thus,— A hero is a man, chance-lifted, held, Perchance unwilling, for a little space, High in the light of lurid circumstance. ...,.'• ■ ■ # ♦ # And now I see the Valley of the Hutt, Tho river and the trees in whispering And stretched on either hand, the folded hills —' ■ ' , , ~ Wrapt in their togas of cloud-shadow—he Widespread before my memory-haunted -■-eyesi--' ■ . ""r" ,- ♦. ♦ * To all, farewell! No more the Tararuas: No more, the magic o£ the bush-birds No movefile rattle of the sparkling trams Down Manners Street: No more the frenzied joy , ' , ...i Of that last-minute win on batumayi v # * * All these are gone, my mother,-], go too, Since we are here to fight, and fighting, die. #■.•*.. •♦ We ask no requiem. Only, after death, We would that you remember thousands Prayerless, mayhap and agonised and torn. . , , ~, And yet, unwiat, some special laitn is For over ail the labyrinthine length, And through the twisted depth o£ all our There 'lives a nameless Soul, a Splendour Dwarfing 6all death to nothingness, a Passing Ver life like shadows of a cloud. * * '■• My country . . . England too , . . what England means • • • ', Called me to give what I might nnd to For lts'Tor her, for freedom. So, for me, What is there else than life that 1 can . give? ♦ * * I feel that nameless Soul enriching mine, The Splendour over me. . . . I go con- , tent. ♦ ■ # *•.-■. Only I pray it to be on some fine day, With sunshine in the sky; and in the thick Of some fierce fight—steel flashing round me, red: • ■ ' .' ', The blinding fire, the rush and thrust they love, ■ . ' My splendid fellows: my last sight on earth . ~: Their triumph, man to man, and hand to hand, ... . ■. ' O'er those . . ■ but God will judge.