Selected Ver§e»

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17840, 12 October 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

Selected Ver§e»

SUNDAY. “ Is It m laying aside of task and tool, ■Donning the festive robe, being more slow About the little things that must be done, Chime of church hells as little children go Trooping away, so clean, to Sunday school? Is it in earnest creatures everywhere Bowing their heads in prayer ? “ No : more than that ; the very air is still, The sky a softer blue, earth’s harmonies Grow more insistent, and the birds themselves Chirp differently : the soul is held until It hears another whispering in the trees, A deeper hush, as if a mighty hand Blessed potently the land. ' “ Unhappy he who never really knows That Sabbath benediction ; he who, blind and dumb, Bound fast Inevitably upon the wheels Of the material, never feels the grace Of God’s great hands laid for a little space On earth’s poor fretted face.” —lElsie Fry Laurence in the New Outlook. ROBINSON CRUSOE. The train stopped on the sandhills by the sea The locomotive hissing quietly ; A seabird called—no other sound beside The melancholy murmur of the tide; Wild thyme I saw, and thistles, tufts of green And slimy weed on rocks, with pools between. And the old man rose, and put his head Out of the Window: ‘Sonny, look,’ he said, 1 Ower beyond lhae nets, yon leaning post, Robinson Crusoe lived upon this coast . . .’ “I saw the swaying palm trees rising high To burst green feathery rockets in the sky ; Deep down, a coral forest in dim light Where scarlet Ashes swim, and at night The water burned with phosphorescent glow— Stars in heaven, and in the sea below. I saw the tell-tale footprints'in the sand. The war canoes come racing in, a band Of flcrcc-eyed cannibals who roasted men— Oh, for the grand days of adventure then i "The old man guessed my thought, and laughed. ‘Ay, ay,’ Said he, ‘lt's no much worth, just sea and sky, Gey cauld it is, an’ bleak, but he was glad, Nae doot, to be at hame again, my lad.’ ’’ —George Woden in the Glasgow Herald.

HOLIDAY. “ To go swinging along with the sting of tlie wind in our faces, And the look in our eyes that the sight of blue distances brings ; Know the glamour of mysteried woods, and of wide, sunswept places— Oh, this is to calch just a glimpse of the glory of things 1 “ To stand and look down on a landscape of miniature wonder. And then from the hill-top descend to the meadow again ; To hear in the distance the ominous rumble of thunder. And, laughing, to run in the swift-rising wind and the rain ; “To dazzle our eyes with a buttercup meadow in May-time ; To watch the slow marvellousness of a dragon-tly’s birth, 'And after the heat and the joy and the rapture of day-time Feel the stillness and coolness of evening enfolding the earth ; “ To have all these wonders and one other wonder together— That life could be ever so sweet or this green earth so fair [ The grass, and the sky, and the fields, and tiie woods, and the heather— And you with the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair | " —J. 'Merton George, in the Booliman. .THE DAISY. “Mot worlds on worlds in phalanx deep Need we to prove that God is here ; The daisy, fresh from Nature’s sleep, Tells of His hand in lines as clear. "For who but Ho who arched the skies, And poured the dayspring's living Hood, Wonders alike in all lie tides. Could raise the daisy's purple bud ; “ Mould its green cup, ils wiry stem, Its fringed border nicely spin, And cut the gold-embossed gem That, set in silver, gleams within ; “And fling it, unrestrained and free, O’er hill and dale and desert sod, That man, where’er lie walks may see In all his footsteps, there’s a God?" —From a sermon by Robert Collyer, in the Inquirer.