VERSES.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17786, 10 August 1929, Page 16 (Supplement)

VERSES.

WINTER. (Sent by Jocelyn Mole, Frankton.) Now, Winter, as a peevish child That weeps and wails without a cause, Comes with his mournful sighs and tears Complaining round about our doors. A most unwelcome visitor, This wretched urchin all forlorn, With chilly fingers, muddy feet, And garments tattered, old and torn. With high-piled fires of crackling logs, Whose red flames up the chimney leap, We strive to make this vagabond His distance from our houses keep. But nought affrights him, and he makes Than would a spook no more ado At crannies, cracks and crevices And keyholes, creeping clyly thro’. We dance, we sing-and merry make, That he may think we do not heed His presence, yet when he departs. Oh, happy folk we are indeed! NEW ZEALAND.

(Sent by Jean Gibson, Hamilton.)

God girl her about with the surges, And winds of the masterless deep; With the tumult that rouses and urges Quick billows to sparkle and leap; He filled from the life of their motion Her nostrils with breath of the sea, And gave her afar in the ocean A Citadel Free.

Her beauty abides in all changes, O’er isles where the palm meets the pine, Where torrents sweep cold from white ranges, To coasts of the fern tree and vine; Till voices of streams that rushed waking The gorges hoarse cataracts fill, Are lost in the roar of seas breaking— The sound never still.

Peaks piercing the silence of heaven, Snows gleaming in luminous space, See her waves round a hemisphere .driven, Fling their crests to the winds as they race; And the stars watch her lamp newlylighted, And its beams shot afar o’er the sea, With a light of old wrongs newly righted By men who are free.

THE FAIRIES’ DANCE. (Sent by Flora McDonald, Kaipaki.) Queen Rosebud gave a ball one night Upon the velvet green; A score of fairy folk there came To dance before their queen. I saw them from my little bed, ’Twas the fairest sight I’vo seen. The great round moon peeped o’er the hill ; She shed a silver glow Upon the radiant fairy group Now flitting to and fro. I held my brea.h, and as I gazed She winked at me, I know. A soft wind stirred among the leaves, Sweet with the breath of spring; I caught a glimpse of shining gold That tipped each fairy wing; I heard the sound of fairy bells That soft and low did ring. :

MOONBEAM FAIRIES. (Sent by Joyce Bryant, Claudelands.) A host of fairies came at night; Their hair is like the golden sun, Their dresses all are snowy white, And down a moonbeam they will run. They come when mortals are asleep, Just to sing a fairy song, And just to have a little peep At every child, but not for long. And as the day breaks off they’ll fly To a land that’s far away, Where fairy babies never cry, But dance in fairy rings all day.