AMONG THE POETS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11947, 5 March 1917, Page 4

AMONG THE POETS.

EDELWEISS. Above the line Of thawless snows, On yonder height, One flower grows. And in my bosom, Winter-bound, Lives one such flower Which thou hast found. —Ernest Radford. memorl¥positum. Brave, good and true, I see him stand before m© now, And read again on that young brow, Where every hope was new, "How sweet wore lifol" Yet by the mouth firm set, And look made up for Duty's utmost lebt, I could divine ho knew That death within the sulphurous hostile line*; In the mere wreck of nobly-pitched designs, Plucks heartsease, and not) rue. Happy their end Who vanish down life's evening stream, Placid as swans thai drift in dream Round the next river-bend. 'Sappy long life, with honour at the close, Friends' painless tears, the softened thought of foes. And yet, like him, to spend All at a gush, keeping our first fa.iuh sure From mid-life's doubt and eld's contentment poor— What more could fortune send? Right in the ian, On the red rampirts' slippery swell, With heart that beat a. charge, he fell Forward, as fits a man; But the high soul burns on to lightmen's feet Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet; His life her crescent's span, Otbs full with share in their undarkening days Who ever climbed tho tempting steeps of praise Since valour's praise began. —James Russell Lowell. PEACE. I pray for peace, yet peace is but a prayer. How many wars have been in my brief years! All races and all faiths, both hemispheres, My eyes have seen embattled everywhere The wide eartih through: yet do I not despair Of peace that slowly through far ages neare, Though not to me the golden, morn appears; My faith is perfect in time's issue fair. For man doth build on an eternal scale, And his ideals are framed of hope deferred ; The millennium oame not; yet Christ did not fail. Though ever unaccomplished is His word; Him Prince of Peace, though unenthroned, we hail, Supreme, when in all bosoms He be! heard. —G. E. Woodborry. OTTR NAMELESS DEAD. To those of our comrades who perished in the early stages of the fighting in the Dardanelles, and who, through the pilferage of identification discs by enemy snipers, were unrecognisable, and were buried "nameless" on tho hillside, just behind trenchline where these lines were written. Comrade of knapsack or bandolier! Tread light, we pray, when you pass this way, For sake of the brave ones slumbering hero, Nameless in death to the Judgment Day. Tread light lest the tramp of your martial host, Or the rattle of rifle or bayonetblade, Should ring down the night to their silent post, And rouse them too soon for the Grand Parade.

Close-buried they lie, yet they perished lone. And death scattered them wide on the war-worn track; And we found them far out, in their fate, unknown ; And Tev'rent and sadly we brought them back; And we laid them to rest on this lonely slope, With tho sward they had won for their funeral-pall, 'Neath the star-hung beacons of faith and hop©. While the night-wind whispered its sentry-call.

And we fashioned a slab for each sacred tomb, And in rough-hewn letters their tale engraved, While in grim salute came the far-in boom Of the guns whose pathways their lives had paved. And we hollowed A space in the solemn stone For the names they'd gloried, which none could tell, Save God, to whose silence their souls had flown, And the cold earth which guarded His secret well.

And we banished a tear as tho final sod Of the last sad sepulchre sank home, For the anguished cries to a silent God Of the dear ones left in the years to come— Of the mothers waiting hv hopes so vain, In tho homes made lonely far o'er the sea, Where they'd list for the " step at the door" again, And the fond embrace that could never be.

And we wondered trie while-~when on history's page, With tew**' lrfe4>leed, their country'* fatoe .'.. . was lettered in ir6,Jof mifsh fufcore •■ftge .- To kindle ever in.qtoencriless Wka* Mnowed place, in tla&t glorldia iaJe, With their nation'ij pafariot dead would Bhare, The comrades brav© with death's solemn veil Left nameless, asleep in the silence there. --"Daily Chronicle.''