AT THE SIGN OF THE LYRE

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 59

AT THE SIGN OF THE LYRE

THE QUEEN OF QUEENS. Often a Nation mourns, but now a world. The noblest Monarch of her time has passed; Sadly the drooping colours are unfurled And silent gloom o'er all the earth is cast Never was such a death—nor such a life— A life so praised, a death so sadly mourned; As Queen, as Mother, and as Widowed Wife With wisdom, virtue, grace and love adorned. Watching throughout the years to find a flaw, Once, only once the wond ring world has seen, One treating highest duty as her law, And thus acclaimed of all a perfect Queen. —J.A. January 23, 1901. THE LAND OF NOONDAY DREAMS. It lies somewhere in. the ambient air, That fair land of Noonday Dreams, And often in fancy I wonder away Where it's beauty in brilliance beams; For it bleeps at ease on* the purple seas, In a wake away to the west; And. when my care is too heavy to bear I fly to that land for rest. It is far on high in the sheeny sky, At an infinite distance it seems; But .1 soon get there through the magic air On the wings of the swift sunbeams; For the pathway lie® through the boundless skies, Where no human foot may fare, Yet, I close my eyes, then a moment flies, I know no more—l am there. And I dream the hours 'mid it's brilliant bowers, Or roam o'er it’s fairy strand, "WTiere rivers of old banks of gold* Murmur o'er diamond sand; And the bright hope® gone, and the lights that shone In my early cloudless years, Be-appear again like joy in pain— Or as smiles that gleam through tears, i There the old hearts true their old loves renew With passions that ne'er grow cold. And the friends that were one in the years long gone All meet the same as oi old; There no tears are shed o'er the lost or dead, For past the night and the tomb—'Tis a verdant sphere where everything dear Lives high tyond this world of gloom. I would fain repose in that land of muse, And gaae on its glorious gleams, By the hyaline deep I could calmly sleep, In a mystical dream of dreams; But 'tis only a time in that magical clime That my fancy’ wanders there, For the vision flies when I ope' my eyes, And leaves me this world of care. Still ’tis sweet to know I can always go Beyond bounds of time and space; On a sunbeam's tip for a skyward trip To that halo high of grace; And recline alone in that secret zone In ecstacy far away, But sad it all seems that my noonday dreams But a short space come to stay. —W, H. Fahey. Dunedin, January, 1901.