Among the Poets A Bouquet of Verses

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16905, 2 December 1922, Page 20

Among the Poets A Bouquet of Verses

TWILIGHT. All in the dusky twilight, Here in the world of grey, The rustle of cherry-blooms I hear. And smell the heavy may. V hen the last thrush has sung to the | first star, j And the last flower drooped its head. ! , And the shadows have fallen from ! I heaven. And sent the light to bed. j I rest from the noisy day shine. With my head upon my knees. --.lda M. Withers. j SONNET AFTER RE-READING SHAKESPEARE. ! Oh I can never be myself again. | I* is too late to live, too soon to die: ! i am a poet made of many men ! each was tar more beautiful than 1 | j This meagre candle pales before a sun ! 100 bright to bear, and now within the ! mind Aly thoughts, like lamps put out, die j one by one. (he Very Light has burst and I am j blind. Sorrow was mine long since, and love and faith, Companions sweet, sufficient for my ! need. j But these are treading oil the heel of i | Death j And from all else but passion am l ( freed. j For never now. remembering his name, ! j Shall 1 set pen to poem save in shame. 1 Edward Davison, in the London ! I : * Mercury.’* LEGENDARY. • Each land where Man has ever built a State Preserve? its tale of glory or of ! j wrath. Short peace; loner wars, that from encrirosoned bath i Left new high mark; to name its ! people “ great * " j But where no record holds, or stands ! a date— Beyond that misty bound, each coun- 1 try hath | Outlying fields through which is laid j ; the path Of gods and titans, shadowing human j fate.

The Realm of Legend ! Yet , howe’er enorm. Uncouth or fair the shapes that ! crowd its space. Their genesis springs from the roots of race (Each i*ace its own), and they run true to form; Here, too, is History, true ae. parch ment rolL— The History of a People's dreaming Soul! ) i Each mortal's story is not otherwise : j A few undoubted records* cold and bare. Unchanged, though many years we should outwear. : Beyond, the region filled with glamour lies | Of memories half lighted to dim eyes. ■ And “ Chanced this here, or chanced it otherwhere? Or thus—or so! 3 ” we ask; and scarce our care 1 AATiat was our past, can rightly all devise. ; If Love unworthy was—and then discrowned, ■ AYliv shines his nimbus still in empty air? i The road stopped short—how did we onward fare ? AA'e lost the thing most prized—a better found! . So. every human story is o’ergrowu With Legends . . . hut each story hath its own. Edith M. Thomas in the “ New • \ York Sun.” j AQUATINT FRAMED IN GOLD, i i 1 Six flights up in an out-of-date apart- ; ment house Where all the door-.iambs and wainscots jare of back walnut I And the last tenant died a.t the ripe age of eighty. Tick-tock, the grandfather’s clock, ; Crowded into a corner against the black walnut wainscot. ! Surrounded by the house-gods of her ; family for throe generations -. j i Teakwood cabinets, rice-paper j I books, slim,, comfortless chairs ot i j spotted bamboo. Too many house-gods for the space , allotted them, exuding an old and corroding beauty, a beauty faded * and smelling of, the past. Tick-tock. the grandfather's clock. Accurately t-elling The time, but forgetting whether it is to-day or yesterday. Sleeping every night in a walnut bedstead

AY ith a headboard like the end of a family pew; AYaking every morning to the photographs of dead relations. Dead relations sifted all over the house. Accumulated in drifts like dust or snow. Tick-tock. the grandfather’s clock, Indifferently keeping up an old tradition. Unconcernedly registering the anniversaries of illnesses and deaths, But omitting the births, they were so long ago. The lady is neither young nor old, ’ She walks like a waxwork among her crumbling possessions. She is automatic and ageless like the clock, And she. tot), is of a bygone pattern. She sits at her frugal dinner. Careful of its ancient etiquette. Opposite the portrait of a great-aunt Done by a forgotten painter. The portrait lived once, it would seem. To judge by the coquetry of its attire, But the lady has always been a waxwork. Of no age in particular. But of ar. unquestioned ancestry. Tick-tock. the grandfather’s clock Ironically recording an hour of no importance. Amy Lowell, in “'Hie Nation.”