Among the Poets

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16846, 23 September 1922, Page 4

Among the Poets

3 n i A Bouquet of Verses | j

MY HEART LEAPS UP. My heart leaps up when J behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began ; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Alan ; And I could, wish, my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. Wordsworth. THE POET’S DREAM. On a Poet’s lips I slept, Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seek 3 nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the kisses Of shapes that' haunt Thought’s wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The_ yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be— But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of Immortality! Shelley. THE GAMERA SHUTTER. There’s a queer little sound That goes floating around, When scarcely a word dare you mutter; That pays little heed To time, place, or creed— It’s the click of the camera shutter. Though Bishops may scowl, Though Judges may growl, And officials fierce warnings may utter ; Though hostesses wail, That sound will prevail— The click of the camera shutter. Though it worry the bride . In her wedding-day pride, Or harass a championship “ putter,” Frorn the Poles to the Cape You cannot escape From the click of the oamera shutter 1 J. R.. in “ John o’ London’s Weekly.” COBWEB. The filmy cobweb threads float out, and fall, And rise and float upon the morning air, Dew-pearled. Frail filmaments, and fine, yet strong to bear The spinner, basy on the garden wall, Upon the pink tecoma petals there, Close-furled. Afo-st exquisitely light and slender, they Have found the branch, and touched the quivering leaves, Sun-gilt, They shine like gold as still the spinner weaves His silken -web, until the aery way, Linked to the shelter of the verdant leaves. Is built. Even so, I send my thoughts to thee through space, Alosh fine as this that holds the captive bough; A chain As light as thistle-down to bind thee. Now Are we two linked together,- I and thou, And shall be, till we meet by Time’s good grace Again. G. Ethel Alartyr in “ The Australasian.” THE PIT OF BLISS. When I was young I dared to sing Of everything and anything— Of joy and woe and fate and God, Of dreaming cloud and teeming sod, Of hill that thrust an amber spear Into the sunset, and the sheer Precipice that shakes the soul To its black gape—l sang the whole Of God and man. nor sought to know Alan or God or joy or woe; And, though an older wight I be, Aty soul hath still such ecstacy That, on a pulse, T sing and sing. Of everything and. anything. There is a light shines in the head ; It is not gold, it is not red ; But, as the lightning’s blind light, It is a star© of silver white That one surmise would fancy blue ; On that mind-blindiug hue I gaze An instant, and I’m in a maze Of thinking—could one think so? It is no feeling that I know— An hurricane of knowing that Could whelm the soul that was not pat To finch and lose the deadly thing ; And sing, and sing again, and sing Of everything and anything. An eagle whirling up the sky, Sunblind, dizzy, urging high. And higher beating yet a wing Until he can no longer cling. Or hold, or do a thing but fall And sink and whirl and scream through all The dizzy, heaven-hell or pit, In mile-a-minute flight from it That he had dared—From height to height So the poet takes iiis flight And tumbles in the pit of bliss; And in the roar of that abyss And falling, he will sing and sing Of everything and ar3’thing. What is knowing—but to see : What if feeling—’tis to lie ; What is love—-but more and more To see and be; to be a pour And avalanche of being, till The being ceased, and is still For every motion; what is joy Beiifg, past all earthly cloy And intermixture : being spun Of itself is being won ; That is joy, and this is God To be that in cloud and clod. And in cloud and clod to sing. James Stephens, in “ The Spectator.”