Verse—Old & New

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19337, 29 May 1937, Page 9

Verse—Old & New

| Coronation Sonnet I •Tohn Masefield, Britain’s poet Laureate, published on April l(i his Coronation sonnet to London: Yon stand upon the highway of the ( sea, AVhcrein ihe ships, your children come and go In splendour at the full of every How, Bound to and from whatever ports may be. Through this beginning reign, for years to come, May fortune sol your lot iu happy times: Vour seaman saint still marking, with his chillies Daily, some ship of yours returning home. Though you are changed from what 1 once beheld: Though your remembered hulls are with tlie coral: I cannot think upon your might unstirred. 0 sacred city of the lost seabird May wealth, out. ransoming the ports of eld, Be yours, with spiritual gold and holy laurel. Isle of Maurice. Dedicated to Robert Edward Hart, national poet of Mauritius.

Fair isle ol' Maurice, asleep on the deep, Where slumbers inland, Floreal and Cu repipe, A crater extinct—volcano of old. A rock on coast ‘‘‘The Coastguard ” bold. .Indian name Mangnlhhau —as hioreal now. And I’ioterbotle, with his bottle-high brow; And Du Douce —a mountain thumb; —Pcttniou’s far peaks hold one dumb As their lofty crowns seen on summer days, When summer’s breeze dispels the summer’s haze. A shelter by crater, where pines and cedars grow, And in the inner slopes whore pandanus shade below; And Iron attx earl's—yet deer No longer haunts the old woods here, For, mail—frequented now they are, And waters quiet, relied passing clouds afar. Whore rivulet, tree-ferns and bamboo gro vos, Pemuanls of primeval forests, where loves The bean!eons, small bengalees, red of beak, Canary bird, or cardinal thus woodland seek, Where ripened berries burst, and seeded-grass attracts. "Paul et Virginia’s” land Whore came.immortal romance grand Extinct, Mauritius dodo, that once t rod, As did our in on on New Zealand sod. Uni there, lives nation’s poet — Knberl Edward Hart, Weaving his graceful, harmonious, delicate art In his little island home—his birthplace, loo; Ami all are justly proud—’tis true, Of him in E’ilo Maurice. —Mary Unmanv Ellen Elnir, (lisborne, New Zealand.