PEDLAR'S PACK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 3

PEDLAR'S PACK.

" Love is no huckster; that is mine is thin©.* LOVE'S RIVALSI The creaking tumbrils; the coarse shouts( the blare Of mocking music. Faces, faces —God f What seas of faces, tuned to ono mad mocd Of slaughterous extasy. Not one, noK ono . . , Stay, there's a-, peasant maid—-no, neyef yet Owned peasant such a face, though aha were Joan Who saved France from the savage' Islanders. What does sho here among the ribald mob? Ah, what indeed could IurG"""Bo delicatfl Soul To this Hell-spoi save love?„ Sho comes--* she comes To see—to see one dio. Her eyes ara fixt; Too lustrous eyes, a world of woe and pride And passionate devotion written there, And melting tenderness at strangest strife With bitter questioning; superb self-gifb At grips with haughty challenging of Fate. Behold her, pale as drifted Polar snow. 3, Pale as the Polar snowdrift, and as etilL Tho fiendish work begins. Swift, certain, grim The horrid engine plays its part; the mob Howls itself hoarser with each bloody stroke, While tho Ca Ira fills with devils' mirth Each pause. Nor sight nor sound touch her who seea Light, love, joy, beauty, all the glory of Earth In one sole form —awaits one'sole eclipse. Ho dies; for Franco he dies, at Frenchmen's hands, A patriot true. The uplifted World applauds, But sees not her who, all as willingly, Had given her life; who yearned to stan<f _- beside r ' Her noble husband on the scaffold, pass With him to tho Beyond; to whom no less The cruellest death were but an incident! Of joyous service to tho well-loved Land ; Who bowed her yet magnificently low In love and loyalty, and took the grief. Tho scorn, the unending, aching loneliness, That her Belov'd might have his proud desire, Pass Death's strait gateway, knowing she lived on. Say now, whose love the greater: his who gave His young life on the scaffold, flung away His dream of splendid service through glad years With never a thought, since that was Franco's will; Or hers who might have shared thai ■. rainbowed end, Lived in her country's annals by his side, Shone starliko into manya heart unborn. Yet sank tho woman in the wife, took up The burden of the empty days to be Superbly true—since he would have it sot Marstas.