SELECTED VERSE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 February 1925, Page 16

SELECTED VERSE.

MOTHERHOOD. So short a time tit my command. These children that I hold to-night, God give me grace xo understand, Wisdom to guide their feet aright, That j may be throughout the land A, lamp unto their feet for light. So short a time do small hands cling With confidence to babyhood. 1 Let me not idly dream the thing, But live the noble part I •should, That henceforth from such mothering They shall instinctively seek good. ACTRETH WITH A LITHP. M iss Jose Collins tells a good story of a minor actress who was given a small speaking part in a curtain-raiser. Although apparently herself quite unaware of the fact, the young woman spoke with a pronounced lisp, and the writer of the playlet, who evidently knew this—lie had probably heard her conversing—worked in a lisp in the few lines that were allotted to her. After the first rehearsal he asked her hovv she liked her part. “Pine.” was the reply, “but there’th one think I think rather tliillv about it. Why do von make me olav it with a lithp ?” * TO CORNWALL. When the gold has left the gor.se and the green has left, the bracken, Ancl the purple of the heather lies no more upon the hill, I take my lonely way a-down the roads that lead me to the town. Bat O! my heart is living on the wide moor still! &

I can smell the 'burning neat, I can see the blue smoke curling .... An 1 I know the soft winds blow across the cornfields from the sea; Then let me turn my '.steps again to meet the sunshine and the rain Above the misty. Cornish cliffs that beckon still to me. QUEST. [ freed mv soul one day as a bird of its prison bars; I opened the doors of my being and bade it fly, Anri it. soared in a fierce wild flight to the infinite stars And lost itself in the measureless space of the sky.

My soal became a wind and wandered along the do>vn To whisper among the clover and kiss tim ears of the wheat To base the butterflies, wanton, the peierck and meadow-brown. To the ehnik-fneed edge of the cliff vvher? tire grasses and waters meet.

My suil became a cloud and drifted across lreav’n’s face, And smiled on the world beneath it. so liurrid and far away, Then sighed for the sorrows of iren and wept for a little space, And melted from tears to laughter, the cloud of an Anri I nay.

My soul became as a wave that is blown bv the storm-wind’s lixp.th To wonderful far off countries a Thrill with strange sounds and sights, Full of the colour and glamour of the magical, sunburnt South, With the tlirVib of lang’rous music through the moon-pale, -l-erir.ir.g nights. i In the luisli of the morning star when the dawn’s gvev fingers IVel T'Vi" the deen, sift fold ; f the veil that covers the face of Day, My soul crept back to its prison, too wounded for time to neal. The nnssionate wings of longing that flutter its life away.