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Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18229, 17 January 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

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MY MIND TO ME A KINGDOM IS My mind to me a Kingdom is; Such perfect joy therein I find As far exceeds all earthly bliss That God or Nature hath assigned. Tho’ much I want that most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. Content I live, this is my stay.; I seek no more than may suffice; I press to bear no haughty sway; Look what I lack, my mind supplies. ■Lo! Thus I triumph like a King, Content with what my mind doth bring. Some have too much, yet still they crave, I little have, yet seek no more: They are but poor, though much they have; And I am rich with little store. They poor, I rich; they beg I give; They lack, I lend; they pine, I live. My wealth is health and perfect ease, My conscience clear my chief defence; 1 never seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to give offence; Thus do I live, thus will I die; Would all did so as well as II —-Ben Jonson. THE CUP OF LIFE. We drink life’s cup with the thirsty lips, Our eyes shut last lo fears: About the golden rim there drips Our staining blood, our tears. But when the last swift hour comes on, The light long hid is lit; From startled eyes the band is gone, We suffer and submit. It is not our part to possess The cup that golden gleamed. We see its shallow emptiness: We did not drink —we dreamed. —Mikhail Lermontov

EVENING IN A WINTER MEADOW Nothing is golden where the Summer was The meadow tills with purple, and the slow Persuasive wind repeats the cold and draws The clinging crystal element of so-wv. Three blackbirds on the antlered oak deride The iron of the sky. A pheasant sets His whirring wheel against the cold streamside. The silence stiffens and the water frets. Flake by flake the field fills up; the brook Drifts over the crystal and the frost; The whitened page, unlettered, in the book That holds the single truth that we have lost, (They say, who come in the dark to have a look), For.which the icy mind has been tossed. —Howard McKinley Coming, THE ' COCKEREL KNELLS. Listen! These little cockerels That ring from hill to hill like bells, In spring when violets sweeten the. grass— * What they say will come to pass. What do they say, what do they know? This cock-a-loral-oral crow Of little red and yellow cocks, Is it aught but farmers’ clocks? Farmers’ clocks and ploughmen’s bells — These little sunrise cockerels Sing another song for one That greets- no more the gold of the sun—i But what they say none other hears Till .at the close of numbered years In the dark morning he too lies Still at their cock-a-loral cries. ' —H.M.