Selected Verge

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19759, 14 December 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)

Selected Verge

TO A DOG. So, back again? —And is your errand done, Unfailing one? How quick the gay world, at your morning look, Turns wonder-book! Come in,—o guard and guest: Come, 0 you breathless, from a life-long quest! Search here my heart; and if a comfort be, Ah, comfort me. You eloquent one, you best Of all diviners, so to trace The weather-gleams upon a face; With wordless, querying paw, Adventuring the law! You shaggy Loveliness, What call was it? —What dream beyond a guess, Lured you, gray ages back, From that lone bivouac Of the wild pack? — Was it your need or ours? The calling trail Of faith that should not fail? Of hope dim understood? — That you should follow our poor humanhood, Only because you would ! To search and circle, —follow and outstrip, Men and their fellowship; \nd keep your hearl no less. Your io-and-fro of hope and wist fulness. Through all world-weathers and against all odds! Can you forgive us, now? —- Your fallen gods?

THE WOODS IN DROUGHT. The heavy air is thick with down; Through all the forest downward drips A rain of blossom; the leaves drown The voice of birds; the drugged bee sips. In soft bloom buried to the hips; The sunbeams waver like a breath On a cold mirror at the lips Of some poor sinner nigh to death. When will the tempest break? Heed not; But glide into the arms of Sleep, Like yon gorged bird Into its grot Leaf-hidden In the ash-bole deep. When the trees wail and the rains weep Is time enough to waken. Lay Thy weary head upon a heap Of leaves, and dream the world away. What sense of doom has yonder rose Whose slender leaves the sunbeams curl In prelude of her death? She throws Her breast out like a panting girl Grown tired of dancing. Lo! the merle Links up a chain of merry sound Like phantom chimes on bells of pearl Toiled by mermaidens for the drowned. And here I lie beneath a sea, In leafy fathoms the wind stirs With ellln touch that furtively Fingers the boughs like dulcimers. A sunbeam tillers down and blurs The green abysm with silver haze; And up that ladder, unawares. My soul climbs to I lie light, and prays. —Wilfrid Thorley.