VERSES

Evening Star, Issue 21718, 12 May 1934, Page 19

VERSES

MARCH WORKING Across the soot-grimed London square The trees stretch branches black and bare; The breeze of dawn blows thin and raw; A cat steals by on noiseless paw. The sparrows chirp, still half-asleep; A distant clock chimes soft and deep; The sky’s faint flush foretells the sun; The street lights vanish one by one; And high above the waking street A missel-thrush sings piercing sweet, From topmost twig of topmost tree Pouring a flood of ecstasy. What can he see, that blissful bird? .What hear, that mortals have not heard? Promise of blossom, and the heat Of coming springtime’s dancing feet. ■ —Janet Head, in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly.’ THE ANCIENT MINER He sits the image of a life of toil; The strength of age is his though age of strength ' For him is long since past; and now at length His outworn frame seeks rest; his native soil _ No more shall feel his tread; the dreary moil Of' nights and days the treach’rous earth beneath, Doomed to the damps that fouled his panting breath And gave him poison for his sweat the while—- " Tis o’er; and yet to him denied is ease; His mask-like face all wretched is and pale; His sunken eyes roam round his mean abode; Locked in the dreaded grasp of fell disease. He waits and waits with wasted limbs and frail To rush unto the bosom of his God. —Chas. MacCarron (an unemployed miner),.in the ‘ Cornhill Magazine.’