A BANKER’S POEMS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18653, 23 August 1930, Page 14

A BANKER’S POEMS.

John Ferguson, banker of Stirling, was the son of a banker ,and was practically educated for the profession. He was thirty-six when he became assistant manager in the National Bank of Scotland, and forty when he was appointed manager. Day by day he followed the prosaic and often difficult lines of his profession, and in addition took practical interest in the artistic and public life of Stirling. But in his heart he was before all things a poet, the medium of expression of noble thoughts. Cherswud, in the “New Zealand Scotsman,” in reviewing Tennyson’s verse in the volume “Thyrea,” states that meny of Ferguson’s poems were written from a sick bed. They covered a variety of subjects, but through them all, like a vein of yellow gold in a quartz reef, ran implicit faith and truth in God. For instance, in the sannet “Thyrea,” Ferguson opens with these telling line:

The ‘everlasting sameness of the days, The never-ending sadness of the nights, The weariness each rising hope that blights, The fevered restlessness that slowly slays— How heavy is my heart! O Thou Whose ways Are in the sounding deeps and starry heights, Illume my faith that in Thine Arm which smites I may behold the Arm that will up- , raise. And he could look upon human nature in the round, always with kindliness, yet sometimes with amusement. In describing a low comedian’s efforts to amuse, a slapstick and red-nose turn in the show, the poet truthfully portarys the comic artist on the stage, and then His “biz” and "cackle” done he gets a “roound,” Balloons a bit and exits in a bound. The tickled gods chorus his song the while .... And from His holy house beyond the skies I think the Christ look down with loving eyes Whene'er He sees His toil-worn children smile. Again, how truly and yet lightly does the poet touch on professional touchiness when in describing the passing of some poor soul in an adjoining room, evidently a hospital. He notices the “shuffling of strange feet, along the naked corridor of stone,” while he himself qualied in the deathful dark and longed for day.” Day came and then the thought— O God, that some should stumble by the way! They do not like us to die here, we know, They talk about the credit of the place— The Doctor, when he sounded me today, Said never a word about last night; and 10, Her customed smile lights up the Nurse’s face. Cherswud has done well to call attention to the work of this Scots poet, who, no less than Burns, strikes responsive chords in the hearts of all, whether they be Scots or no.

Mrs Marion St. John Webb, whose death is announced, was the elder daughter of Mr Arthur St. John Adcock, the novelist, essayist, and editor of “The Bookman.” Her books delighted many grown-up readers as well as the children for whom they were intended. Her best-known book was probably “The Littlest One,” published sixteen years ago. I