Verse--Old & New

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18207, 30 September 1933, Page 10

Verse--Old & New

Midsummer. Twelve white cattle on the crest, Milk-white against the chicory skies, Six gazing south, six gazing west With the blue distance in their eyes. Twelve white cattle standing still. Why should they move? There are no flies To tease them on this wind-washed hill. Twelve 1 white cattle utterly at rest. Why should they graze? Yhey are past grazing, They have cropped the grass, they have had their fill. Now they stand gazing, they stand gazing. . , Only the tall red top about their knees. And the white clouds above the hill Move in the softly moving breeze. The cattle move not, they. are still. White and still —and this is peace. —Robert Francis, in the Virginia Quarterly Record. Trees.. Out of the dust of buried men The trees rise up to heaven again. The swaying branch, the steadfast bole Give pledge of an undying soul. The little aspen-leaves are glad With joys dead harvesters once had Ere.they within the tomb lay chill. Dead passion makes the hawthorn spill Her. showers of lovely bloom above Those who in life knew frustrate love.

Out of the.wrack of ruined lives Tho waxen-flowered chestnut thrives, file singing thrushfis in aitil out Shake its green chandelier about. The very breath ol' buried men Burns through the crowdou leaves again. ~ For there mute poets, dead too soon, Still listen to the thrush’s tunc And praise through every bough that 's blown Songs that are sweeter than their own. Who has not longed his life to lay Aside, and steadfastly as they Endure the seasons, giving graeo To spring with green leaves and glad face, To winter showing sinews bare Beneath the clouds an! tho keen air? Who would not leave man’s speech and thought To be as they that suffer nought More sharp of hurt, more soiled of shame Than lovers’ knives that carve a name? —Wilfrid Tliorlev, in London Observer.