Selected Verse
IN ME THE NATIONS. 11 In me the nations disagree With that cold fury of the mind Which sees a mortal enemy / In its own kind. » And lights, more than its opposite, Itself, and kills in fatal pride The lonely trooper suddenly hit From his own side; “And asks no quarter, grants no truce, ' Above the screaming of the fife, Till sweet anatomy let loose The losing life. " And bodies in a high heap pile, ■ Stamped with the- same most baffled face, And silence for a measureless while Accepts a place. “ And then the spirit like a steam Rising straight up, a shining smoke. Decries the violence of the dream From which it woke, “ As nations when ten years have passed After a very bloody war Ask heavens and the things that 1 last What they were fighting for." —Virginia Moore.
LOOTING AT NIGHT. What a-battery of boilers 1 See the host of weary toilers! Derricks fade into the blackness Jacob’s ladder-like, to heaven Songs and curses mixed with laughter That the sordid joke comes after. Grind of wheel and ring of steel — Brakes that gripe to grip on pipe With a smash, crash, crack When the lever hurtles back When the chains enmeshing grind To the torque on stem confin'd; Down the burglar bit goes deeper To the cavcrn’d vault. Grim reaper! Blow the cap-rock far asunder — Bursts to earth another gusher. Roars the oil, and gas like thunder Fountain.-likc and ever (lusher
STREETS. Streets beneath an Eastern sunshine Out Persia way Where the gayly turbaned monarchs Haggle all day: Streets where caravans come straggling From a far land, Where sad, travel-weary camels And tired men stand: Streets through which there ever echoes The muezzins’ cry From where the slender minarets Stab at the sky: Streets where you will see the red lamps And almond eyes Beckon from between the shutters To him who buys: Streets, beneath a tropic moonlight Where tall palms sway, Leading to a golden seashore: Streets where goats play. Happy between reed-thatch'd mud huts And parakeets Flit from tree to tree at mid-day, . . . . Hot, sultry streets: Streets that overlook a blue sea, . . . Houses all white, Dress’d with many coloured sun-blinds, Basking in light: These and these I've seen, yet somehow Thoughts ever stray Back io London streets at twilight, iMud-splash’d and gray. —A.R.U.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WT19351221.2.126.5
Bibliographic details
Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)
Word Count
390Selected Verse Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)
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