Selected Verse

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 15 (Supplement)

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.