POETRY, OLD AND NEW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14142, 18 August 1909, Page 9

POETRY, OLD AND NEW.

MEMORY.

A RUINED wall, all smoked and charred, A long-neglected weed-grown yard, A path o'errun with tufts of grass, A garden gone to seed, alas!

What comfort can there lie in this To one who once hath tasted bliss? What pleasure in that ruined scene Where once all things were fresh and green?

Bring me from yonder garden-close One tender lily and one rose, And let their fragrance lure for me The grateful scenes of memory.

A dwelling hid by trellised vine Wherein once dwelt this heart of mine; A spacious court, and leading thence A pathway boxed with hedges dense, Whereon in days, of pride and pomp My heart and I Were used to romp, Until within the garden we First came upon life's mystery And while the moonbeams played about In pranksomc jest and merry rout, And twinkling stars smiled from above We learned the joyousness of love. Such are the sweets these scenes disclose Stirred by the lily and the roseLost is all grim reality In the embrace of memory! John kendrick bangs. THE GRAVES ARE THERE. O happy little town I love, Bememb'rest me? O bluest sky that arched above, My joy's in thee, 0 little town of memory; O past, so fair. See. for my heart returneth now— The Graves are there! O distant little town I love, Here 'gainst this pane My cheek grows cold for thee. And. past the rain Beating down so furiously,, Thy forms appear, Thy voice calls'from the gloom around, " The Graves are there!" 0 sorrowed little town I love, So mayest thou be When comes thy child alone To sleep in thee, To lay him with the rest Safe in thy care, To slumber on thy breast— The Graves are therer THORN-WELL JACOBS, in the Taylor-Trot-wood Magazine. THE OCEAN OF TIME. By the Ocean of Time, where the merry waves tossing Like silver bells swing to the joy of their chime, You walk on the shore of a sea I am crossing, And yet our hands touch o'er the Ocean of Time. O child of my heart, when your blue eyes arc brimming , , , Afire with the sunrise they dauntlessly meet, in they see the white shoals of the Mermaidens swimming With the wealth of the waters to lay at your feet? Bare galleons of gold—and the sailors all singing. As the hawsers of silk are made fast to the Quay, And the purple sails fall of the Argosy bringing The gifts of the Fairy folk over the sea? We walk by the Ocean—forget as we wander The roar'of the tempest—the shroud of the night Where my ship fights her way through the mists over yonder With the peaks of the Shadowy Kingdom in sight. You look from the shore for the joyous hereafter Enthroned on the scarlet and gold of the west, , And the face of the sea is all dimpled with laughter By a rose-laden breeze from the Isles of the Blest.

Yet far over there where the winter wind rages . Till the splendour of heaven is dusk with its pall Lies the Quest of our striving—the goal of the ages, The Country of Silence that waits for us all. [Shall we find when we land on that Island of Shadows. As men wake from dreams to a world that they know, That the Spring of our Spring is alive in its meadows, Its shore is a shore which we loved long ago?] The wave has no terror—the sky has no warning As you gaze from the beach on the blue of the bay, And through the grey calm comes the rose of the mornin<-. The sheen of the sunriso that heralds the day. But when it is time for thy voyage, my daughter, And the after-glow crimsons, the shadows grow long, May brave, loving arms lift the oars through the water, And thy Pilot bo He of our Tennyson's song.