Select Poetry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 214, 16 October 1875, Page 3

Select Poetry.

THE STORY OF A PICTURE. By Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt. Madonna eyes looked at him from the air, But never from the picture. Still he painted. The hovering halo would not touch the hair ; The patient saint still stared at him—unsainted. Day after day flashed by in flower and frost; Night after night, how fast the stars kept burning His little light away, till all was lost ! All, save the bitter sweetnoss of his yearning. Slowly, he saw his work : it was not good. Ah, hopeless hope ! Ah, fiercely-dying passion ! “ I am no painter,” moaned he as he stood, With folded hands in Death’s unconscious fashion. “ Stand as you are, an instant ! ” some one cried. He felt the voice of a diviner brother. The man who was a painter at his side, Showed how his folded hands could serve another. Ah, strange, sad world, where Albert Diirer takes The hands that Albert Diirer’s friend has folded, And with their helpless help such triumph makes I Strange, since both men of kindred dust were moulded. LOSSES. Upon the white sea-sand, There sat a pilgrim baud, Telling the losses that their lives had known, While evening waned away From breezy cliff and bay, And the strolling tides went out with weary moan, One spake with quivering lip Of a fair, freighted ship, With all his household, to the deep gone down : But one had wilder woe For a fair face, long ago, Lost in the darker depths of a great town. There were some who mourned their youth With a most loving truth, For its brave hopes and memories evergreen ; And more upon the west Turned an eye that would not rest, For far off hills,.whereon its joys had been. Some talked of vanished gold, Some of proud honors told ; Some spoke of friends that were their trust no more. And one of a green grave Beside a foreign wave, That made him sit so lonely on the shore. But when their tales -were done, There spake among them one, A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free ; “ Sad losses have ye met, But mine is heavier yet, For a believing heart hath gone from me.” “ Alas !” these pilgrims said “ For the living and the dead, For fortune’s cruelty, for love’s sure cross, For the wrecks of land and sea : But however it came to thee, Thine, stranger, is life’s last and heaviest loss.” Francis Browne, in London Athenaeum.