VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 18857, 24 June 1920, Page 4

VAGRANT VERSE

THE DOWNS. O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair and lonely; , . , . . 0 still solitude, only matched in the skies. Perilous in steep places, Soft in the level races, Where sweeping in phantom silence UK cloudland flies; With lovely undulation of fall and rise; Entrenched with thickets thorned, By delicate miniature dainty flutters adorned! 1 climb your crown, and lo I a Sight surprising Of sea in iront uprising, sleep and wide: And scattered ships ascending To heaven, lost in the blending Of distant blues, where water and sky divide, Urging their engines against wind and tide. The accumulated murmur of soft splashing. Of waves on rocks dashing and searching the sands, Takes my ear in the veering Baffled wind, as rearing Upright at the did, to the gullies and rifts he stands; And Ids conquering surges scour out over the lands; While again at the foot of the downs He masses his strength to recover the topmost crowns. I—Roberti —Robert Bridges.