Selected Verse.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18642, 21 May 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

Selected Verse .

FIRST DAFFODIL

EXCURSION TO THE PAST.

I who have lain without a sound In my dark coffin underground, Now hear the stirring roots of trees, The broken earth rising to her knees

Unfettered now the springing sod— Up from the pulsing soil, the clod Reaches to that forgotten blue— A soaring flight that I share, too—

For I who lay in narrow earth Noxv know the miracle of birth. ,—Edith Lombard Squires, In the Christian Century.

SILVER-POINT.

Late last night the moon lay With no move on wet, quiet yexv; No foot, through that hush of amber Stained acres of grey dew.

It xvas then, when birds slept And song dreamt under each xving, That you eyed the quiet and gave us Music from its pale sleeping.

As Time turned hack in that sleep You, Scumas O’Sullivan, Set all the gay ladies of Whaley Raiding your Georgian lawn.

There Buck steered an Arabic stallion, Necked like, a scimitar, Frantic through ladles who scattered As fragments of one rent star.

They’re gone; yet each shining delight Again Up-toes the dew — Dusk-quiet, light-shy in June midnights Of txvilight—for you;

For you, who quicken cold joy, From a world scarcely awake That gleams, ns the far sad glory Of a frozen lake

—F. R. Higgins

CHERRY SEASON IN JAPAN.

Tlir snow has melted, the winter tins cone; y t ,[ in; | see a whitened earth once, more.

’Tis spring, but ere the lon fa sic Ins its down, 'l’lie cherries bloom ami now snow down their store. Tread lightly o'er 1 lie ground, Tor petals lie—Con Petti for Ibe spring lime’s bridal day— A whitened carpet 'nealb an azure sky: Like snowllakes, all 100 soon to molt away.

—“ K.P.K.," in the Japan .Magazine

Let us be off. Our steam Is deafening the dome. The needle In the gauge Points to a long-banked rage, And trembles there to show What a pressure’s below. Valves cannot vent the strain Nor Iron ribs refrain That furnace In the heart. Come on, make haste and start Coupling-rod and wheel Welded of patient steel, Piston that does not stir Beyond the oyllnder To take in Us stride •A teeming oountryslde.

A countryside that gleams In the sun’s weeping beams; Where wind-pump, byre and barrow Arc mellowed to mild sorrow, Agony and sweat Grown over with regret. What golden vesper 1 hours Halo the old grey towers, What honeyed bells In valleys Embalm our faiths and follies. Here are young daffodils Wind-wanton, and the hills Have made their peace with heaven. 0 lovely the heart’s haven, Meadows of endless may, A spirit's holiday.

Traveller, 'take care. Pick no flowers there. .—C. Day Lewis,

THE PRIMEVAL PRESENT,

0 city, index of imagining, To what mad, monstrous future do you point, As mammoths did primevally, though Joint And tusk and massive hulk had less to bring To I his great now than any fern whoso wing

Was mangled by their tread? When years

annoinf Yon, oleaginous, will they appoint _ You for the generations yet lo spring?

The. moon beside you sees as even Ihcn It saw. But what will it see when this

Has never known it walked in human phase? Will you prove as the eggshells of a. wren, Or bulwarks so impregnable they must. Endure unscathed throughout, eternal days? —--Sonia Huthele Novak, in the North American Review.