POETRY OLD AND NEW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15548, 4 March 1914, Page 12

POETRY OLD AND NEW.

GREETING TO LIFE. Good-morning, Life—and all Things Bind and beautiful. My pocfottii nothing /hold. *. But he who owns the gold, The Sun, is my great friend— His spending has no end, Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds Whose throats -. Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady bowers, And you green fields of flowers.

-, William H. Da vies.

Many a year I loved the gorse on an English common. - • t Miles on miles of the golden cups and the nutty wine: Cloth of gold for the tramping folk, poor men and women, Still my heart said in complaint: It it/not mine.

Here's a golden wall each side the hill we're breasting. Never sure was the English gorse as great as thij, Grapes of gold from a golden vine for the wild bees' questing, A world of gold and a pearly cloud on a blue abyss.

There's a golden hill behind ns now, eold on the azure, „ ■

The dearest hill, like a little breast in go't The lark springs from a, golden bed, spiflina his treasure *«««•« Down, on the buttercup fields of Ugnt and his hidden love.

Over the hill we bathe our feet to golden water, A little stream the traveller fords, so clear and cold.

But is it May of the leafing—the High King's daughter? " For ail to green is under the wave of the leaping gold. Over the hill—the yellow hill, the Spears are showing. The Silver Spears are turned to gold o'er , the valley's haze. There's a email gold shower on the mountain, and the river flowing Threads in and out like a ribbon of gold through the Milky Ways. The eager bees plunge to the thighs fa a brimming chalice, Their bag so foil Of the golden spoils they scaroe can fly— The mountain calls to the mountain, over the valleys, "Friend, we are Kings in the house of Kings, both you and I." Here with a heart fed of delight as a bee with hooey I sit like a miser counting the gold, nor shall repine For the cuckoo's roaming the golden street, blithesome and bonny And my heart says to my heart: " Have peace; this beauty's thine." KATHABIini TTKA*.

BENEDIOm. I heard at eve ft eoft-toned bell That seemed to bid the day farewell. And brought the world of troubled pare The calm that follows answered prayer. I listened to the measured beat Of pulsing bell-notes, low and sweet, And all the burdens of the ddy That lay upon ttie~fell away. Then silence—but the soft-toned bell Had left the. spirit of its spell Upon the hour, tfae place, and me A blessed benedicite. " —W. J. Lahptox. * 2 y NOCTURNE. Pale drifting pools of silver mist Lie on the dank and sullen land, While Jack-o'-lanterns, hand in hand. With fleeting; shadows, turn and twist. Here, from the gauze-hung silent Wood, Flits the shy bat on crooked -wings; And some late-roving sedge-bird sings Along the marshland solitude. Beyond the pallid drifting- mist Rises, the little Gothic "townIts lamps seem fireflies on a gown Of ever-ae*»'ning amethyst.