VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 21194, 22 September 1930, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. 324.—TW0 MEN. (Written for the Southland Times). Yesterday I spoke to a man who knew Charles Dickens, A true ambassador from another age, Because now, Victorianism is looked upon As something dark, uncertain, open to suspicion, Whose arts were ruled by conventions, Whose social life was swaddled in hypocrisy, A great age, indeed, but don’t look below the surface. An age that like an ostrich hid its head Deep in the sands of plausibility. So much was kept back that at. last It was considered a virtue to keep Truth back, And so the age gave way to a more honest tide, That washed its coasts of their accumulated weeds. But all this does not make Charles Dickens less, By one iota—he was a child of his age. And to-day, I met a man who knew Joseph Conrad, Already something of a legendary figure; A strange unaccountable giant of letters Who packed his high romance with monotony, But never withheld a logical sequence, No matter if it landed His Hero in perdition. For the first time in literary history The sea became protagonist— Fighting for or against hero or villain Right to the very death. So our present, this day, Merges into the historical past, And if I have not spoken with the elect, And the illustrious of what will be antiquity I have spoken with their shadows, Have watched their figures adumbrated Against the walls of time. I have at lest been a link in the chain That binds them close to earth, Keeps their voices clear, and ushers on Their fragmentary immortality. Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad, Two voices of two countries, Two attitudes externally opposed, Two men. When those who live in glass houses Begin to throw stones, Then will liberty be in sight, For though they lose their homes They will gain freedom. Two men—two men. What is the present “Were it not made rich by the past. Two men. —Southerner. Invercargill, September 21, 1530.