SELECTED VERSE

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 12 September 1925, Page 20

SELECTED VERSE

TUMULT. There is no peace in gently sighing trees, No perfume in the sweetest flowers tli,at grow. There is no cool conies wafting o er the breeze, To lay its soothing hand upon my brow, There is no joy in laughter of a child, No lightness to support a weary load; I cannot e’en, forget, or be beguiled By friendship’s helping hand- upon the road. Music can never soothe my troubled mind, Nor sweet songs still the aching oi my brain. There is no peace my tortured soul can find To soothe this deadly, never-ceasing pain. There is no rest in sleep, because my dreams Will find an end in hatred and in No quietude in Death, for that, it seems, Is filled with all the torment of my life. There is no calm at gentle eventide, When radiant Sunset lights the western sky. No starry night, with silvery .moon to guide, Will calm my restless spirit as I lie. My heart is filled with moaning of the wind; My brain whirls- with the tumult of the sea, There is no peace in life that I can find, Because my love has been denied to ■me. —Elizabeth Fairfax in the Australasian. TRYST. O honey bees and butterflies, O golden poppies sweetly tall, . Blown hither from the red sunrise Whose fires across the mountain fall! 0 flying cloudlets, silver grey! Out of the West, O winds that call, Saw you my love upon her way, Slip grim guardian Winter’s thrall? Lacv marge of an em’rald sea. Rippled her tender promise low, Where clematis winds a track for three (While boronia bells laugh goldenly), With sweet -Spring and my song I’ll go!:. —M. B. Patou. TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE. Mild offspring of a. dark and sullen sire! Whose modest form, so delicately fine, Was nursed in whirling storms, And cradled in the winds. Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter’s- -sway, And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight, Thee on this bank lie threw To mark his victory. In this low vale, the promise of the vear, Serene’ thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone Thy tender elegance. So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms Of chill adversity; in some lone walk Of life she rears her head, Obseure. and unobserved.* / While every bleaching breeze that on hjer blows Chastens her spotless purity of breast, And hardens- her to bear . Serene the ills of life. —H. Kirke White. THE SEA. I. I can only think of the sea to-night, Lying clean and wide to the skv, With the murmuring hush of the lapping waves, And the curlew’s haunting cry. i IT. I can only tliiuk of the - sunset’s flush Staining an opal west, And the searing line where' the breakers roll On the reef—with their snowy crest, 111. I can only dream of the harvest moon Painting a path of gold That leads to the “Land of the Great Unknown ’ ’ Which is sailed by young and old. IV. I can only long for the cutting spray And the flap of the swelling sails, With the fragrant smell of the thvmegrown cliffs, And the sound of the sea-gulls’ wails. V: For all that I’ve got is the aching glare And the dust of the gritty street, With the sickly smell of the petrol fumes. And the sound of hurrying feet. —Margaret Black.

CLOUDS. The -breeze within their sails, the clouds drift.past, Afloat upon a vague and lovely sea, Illimitable wastes of -airy blue That lap the shores of pale infinity; With heavenly 0.1.1 goes for sonic unknown plaice, They dream -away into, the mists of -apace. Far, far below, they watch, transparent, large, Their cool reflections wave-ring as they go, In 'that strange world spread out beneath the -sea , Where dark shapes move and dim earth-ga.rclen.si -grew—• A yellow world of spotted shade and sun. With purple deeps, and tangled lines that run. —P. Mann in the Australasian.