Poetry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 220, 27 November 1875, Page 3

Poetry.

THE VOICELESS. We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet-wailing singers slumber : But o’er their silent sister’s breast The wild flowers, who stoop to number! A few can touch the magic string, A noisy fame is proud to win them ; Alas for those that never sing. But die with all their music in them ! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone, Whose song has told their heart’s sad story ; Weep for the voiceless, who have know The cross but not the crown of glory ! Not where the Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow. Oh, hearts that break and give no sign, Save whitening lips and faded tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine, Slow dropped from Misery’s crushing presses If singing breath echoing chord To every hidden pang were given. What endless melodies were poured, As said as Earth, as sweet as heaven ! Oliver Wendell Holmes. THE POWER OF SCIENCE. All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame,” Are but the legacies of apes, With interest on the same. How oft in studious hours do I Recall those moments, gone too soon. When midway in the hall I stood, Beside the Dichobune. Through the Museum-windows played The light on fossil, cast, and chart; And she was there, my Gwendoline, The mammal of my heart. She leaned against the Glyptodon, _ The monster of the sculptured tooth ; She looked a fossil specimen Herself, to tell the truth. She leaned against the Glyptodon ; She fixed her glasses on her nose ; One Pallas-foot drawn back displayed The azure of her hose. Few virtues had she of her own— She borrowed them from time and space ; Her age was eocene, although Post-tertiary her place. The Irish Elk that near us stood, (Megaceros Hibernieus), Scarce dwarfed her; while I bowed beneath Her stately overplus. I prized her pre-diluvian height, _ Her palaeozoic date of birth, For these to scientific eye Had scientific worth. She had some crotchets of her own, _ My sweet viviparous Gwendoline ; She loved me best when I would sing Her ape-descent and mine. I raised a wild pansoplric lay; (The public fled the dismal tones); — I struck a chord that suited well That entourage of bones. I sang the very dawn of life, Cleared at a bound the infinite chasm That sunders inorganic dust From sly-born protoplasm. I smote the stiffest chords of song, I showed her in a glorious burst How universal unity Was dual from the first. How primal germs contained in one The beau-ideal and the belle ; And how the “ mystery of life” Is just a perfect cell. showed how sense itself began In senseless gropings after sense ; She seemed to find it so herself, Her gaze was so intense). And how the very need of light Conceived, and visual organs bore ; Until an optic want evolved The spectacles she wore. How headless molluscs making head Against the fashions of their line, On pulpy maxims turned their backs, And specialised a spine. How landward longings seized on fish, Fretted the type within their eggs, And in amphibian issue dif--ferentiated legs. I hopped the quaint marsupials, And into mammal races ran, And in a daring fugue I rushed From Lemurs up to Man. How tails were lost—but when 1 reached This saddest part of all my lay, She dropped the corners of her mouth, And turned her face away. And proud to see my lofty love So sweetly wince, so coyly shrink, I woke a moving threnody— I sang the missing link. And when I spake of vanished kin, Of Simian races dead and gone, The wave of sorrow from her eyes Half-drowned the Glyptodon. I turned to other, brighter themes, And glancing at our different scales, I showed how lady beetles are Kobuster than the males. I sang the Hymenoptera ; How insect-brides are sought and got; How stridulation of the male First hinted what was what. And when—perchance too fervently— I smote upon the chord of sex, I saw the tardy spark of love Blaze up behind her specs. She listened with a heightened grace, She blushed a blush like ruby wine. Then bent her stately head, and clinked Her spectacles on mine. A mighty impulse rattled through Her well-articulated frame ; And into one delighted ear She breathed my Christian name. And whispered that my song had given Her secret thought substantial shape, For she had long considered me The offshoot of an ape. She raised me from the enchanted floor, And, as my lips her shoulder met, Between two asthmas of embrace She called me marmosette. I strove to calm her down ; she grew Serener and serener; And so I won my Gwendoline, My vertebrate congener. Brunton Stephens.