VERSE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CIII, Issue 15742, 28 August 1915, Page 3

VERSE.

I ! •'THE PRIVILEGE OF AN ENGLISHMAX.''* | You laugh and loaf, while others dare and do. _ And yet—a woman risked her life tor yon! Braved her ordeal, counting not the cost, So she might add one man to England's host; His arm her shield—prize of triumphant pain. _ 0 bitterest pang!—to know her travail rain. —"Spectator." SPP.IXG SONG. There's a whisper in the-" street ' Through the din of passing feet. Just a fragrant, vagrant murmur on the spring wind borne along. Breathed from fern-tret forest hushes 'Where the frail arbutus blushes. Mingled clear from swamp-sweot rushes .With a distant thrush's song. There's a smoke-spread sun-warmed haze On the-dingy city ways.. Just ■ a lazy, hazy veiling in a blueinfolding blur; Crept from reedy lowland sedges Through the white-starred wayside hedges. Past the hemlocks on. their ledges. By the edges wind-astir. Spring has loitered in the street Mid the throng of heedless feet. Blossom-laden, gypsy maiden, through the grimy buildings 1 train : Mid the cries of hucksters vending. City tnmnlt never-ending,-Song of forest reaches blending "Woodland-wending through the rain. —Martha Haskell Clarke. THE SCHOOL AT WAR. 'All night before tho brink of death In fitful sleep" the army lay, t For through the dream that stilled their breath Too gauntly glared the coming day. But we, within whose blcod there leaps The fnlness of a life as wide As Avon's water where he sweeps Seaward at last with Severn's tide. We heard beyond the desert- night The murmur of the fields we knew. And our swift souls with one delight Like homing swallows Northward ~""flew We played again the immortal games. And grappled with the fierce old friends. And cheered the dead undying names. And sang the song that never ends: Till, when the hard, familiar bell Told that the summer night was late. Where long ago we said farewell We said farewell by the old gate. "O Captains unforgot,"" they cried, "Come you again or come 110 more> Across the world you keep the pride. Across tho world we mark the score." a —Henry Newbolt.