SELECTED VERSE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20775, 8 April 1939, Page 13 (Supplement)

SELECTED VERSE

EVTERNATIONAL ANTHEM

O GOD, the changeless Sun Of worlds whose life is one, We share Thy light and winds, and tides, and stars! We share one human breath, One many-windowed faith, One will to break all Time’s dividing bars. O LIFE, that all must share Always and everywhere, Our Goal, our deathless hope of happiness, We know that each one’s good Lies but in brotherhood; Guide us to practise what we thus profess. Brothers-at-heart are we, One world-wide Family, Answering one challenge till our race is Ready, our days to vow, Utterly, here and now, Each for the good of all, all for each one. O LOVE, Whom each child knows— Man, dog, bird, star, and rose— Flame through the world till Thy victorious fire Shows every foe a friend, Burns to their final end Conflict and enmity in one glorious pyre! Hark! How the ages call Clearly to each and all, From wear’s wild tyranny to force release, Change hate to homes and health, Greed into work and wealth, Loss to prosperity and age-long Peace! This, then, the touch we bear Through dark hours everywhere, Signal for valiant hearts, unfaltering hands, This our one battle-cry, (Each nation’s victory),— / M PEACE IN OU$ TIME, O LORD! PEACE TO ALL LANDS! ’’ —Dorothy Kynnersley Victoria, B. C.

LOST TREASURE

The trees that through the windows peep Shelter the graves where our fathers sleep. They raise their arms toward the sky From the narrow graves where our fathers lie. A narrow mound, with never a stone, Cover? their Quakerly dust and bone. There they lie without a name. Who here with God together came; They who abjured all earthly things, To follow the Word of the King of Kings; They who have shivered and starved in jail. For the Truth they knew must at last prevail; They who have proudly and meekly known The stinging jibe and the stinging stone; They whose patience and pain have won A heritage for me, their son. . . . And I, who come to their House to-day, Have flung, have flung their treasure away. —P. J. Crafton Green, in “ The Friend.”

PICTURES

Blue horizons find the city, When the country comes to town, With its winding fields and rivers, Roads that ramble up and down. Though the ice is on the pavement, There is summer in the wheat, And a glimpse of wooded pasture, And an elm-arched village street. With a white gate where the lane turns, Shutters framed in orchard boughs, That is home to someone sitting In the crowded movie house! —Sara King Carleton “ THIS BROKEN FIELD ” The world is a broken field By iron and hatred ploughed, And over the waste a leaden sky Deepens into dark cloud. No promise of harvest now, No furrows wait; but scars Gape cold and sterile take Seed of circling wars. When will the sun of reason dawn Dispersing fear and pain? How can the Sower trust these fields To nurture golden grain? Can they grow green once more Beneath a radiant sky, Or bend before the harvest song Till sheaves stand high? Only the desolate ground, Only the bitter yield— Will there be meadows again In this broken field ? —Edna Davis Romig, in the Christian Century.

A MIDLANDS EXPRESS

Muscular virtuoso! Once again you take the centre of the stage, The flat Midlands. The signals are all down, the curtain is raised And with unerring power you drive Straight to your goal. You pull down all the Northern iron rifted Mountains to your knees, Until they’re pressed beneath your feet Dragging my sight back with their weight. You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a life With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes. O juggler of the wheeling towns and stars Unpausing even with the night, Beneath my lines I read your iron lines Like the great art beneath a little life Whose giant travelling ease Is the vessel of its effort and fatigue. —Stephen Spender.