Verse Old and New.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 7, 17 August 1910, Page 71

Verse Old and New.

Thanatos Athanatos (Deathless Death). L / V T eve when the brief wintry day / | is sped, J I muse beside my fire’s faintflickering glare— Conscious of wrinkling face and whitening hair— Of those who, dying young, inherited The immortal youthfulness of the early dead. I think of Raphael’s grand-seigneurial air; Of Shelley and Keats, with laurels fresh and fair Shining unwithered on each sacred head; And soldier boys who snatched death’s starry prize, .With sweet life radiant in their fearless eyes, The dream of love upon their beardless lips, Bartering dull age for immortality; Their memory hold in death’s unyielding fee The youth that filled them to the finger-tips. —John Hay. © © © The Magazine Hero. The Magazine Hero is big and broad And handsome and brave and fine; And he who would write must follow the cut And fashion him line for line. It doesn’t ma'tter what real men are In every-day life we know; There are things the Magazine Man must be. Or the Magazine Tale won’t go. Would we dare to carve a Magazine Man In -the stature of live feet four,

Though the measure of men we meet each day Is very seldom more? The Magazine Man is A “college grad.” And starved on the football field. How could we make him a dry-goods clerk, With a pair of shears to wield? Oh, the Magazine Hero gets in fights, And never with less than two. Imagine making him run if he could, Which is just what a man would do. The Magazine Hero loves and weds In a month or a week or a day, For it isn't a question of dollars and cents, 'Which is only a real man’s way. So we model him after the regular rule, And our story is read with glee, For people don't want wha't a real man is, But what they would like him to be. © © © Good-Bye. Bear love, good-bye, Though my heart break beneath its weight of pain, 1 must not look upon your face again: — 1 dare not cry That life spreads out before me, desolate, For none must know; each one must bear his fate, Nor question why. The road lies on before us. Thorn and stone May wound us, yet we go alone, Nor seem to sigh. Yet sometimes, in the dim year’s passing, throw One kindly thought to one who loved you so, — Dear love, —good-bye. —Lillian Bennet Thompson.

My Faith. I trust in what the love-mad mavis Kings, In what the whiteweed says whercso it blows, And the red sorrel and the redder rose; I trust the power that puts the bee on wings, And in the "socket sets the rock, and rings The hill with mist, and gikta the brook, ami sows The dusk; is on the wind which comes and goes, The voice in thunders and leaf-mur-murings; I trust the might that makes, the lichen strong, That leads the rabbit from her burrow forth, That in the shadow hides, in sunlight shines; 1 trust what gives the one lone cricket song, What points the clamorous wild-goose harrow north, Ami sifts the white calm on the winter pines. —John Vance Cheney. I'he poem below is in a contrasting vein, and in it the poet's “trust in the power that puts the bee on wings,” etc., is not .so evident: The Drawing of the Lot. One comes with kind, capacious hold. But through his fingers slips the gold; He with the talons, his the hands That rake up riches as the sands. One fats as does the ox unbroke: Never on his red neck the yoke. The pale, stooped thing, with heart and brain. On him the weight of toil and pain. One longs,—she with the full warm breast. But no babe’s head does on it rest; On some starved slant a fool thought fair Love’s boon is thrust, and suckled there. —John Vance Cheney.

Ad Manus Puellae. 1 was al ways lover of ladies* hands! Or mr my heart came here to tryst, For the sake of your carved white hand# , -commands; , The tampering fingers, the dainty wrist | The hands of a girl were what 1 kissed. I remember a hand like a lleur-de-lys When it slid from its silken sheath, her glive; With its odours passing ambergris: And that was the empty husk of (y love. Oh, how shall 1 kiss your hands • enough ? They are pale with the pallor of ivories; But they blush to the tips like a curled seashell; What treasures in kingly treasuries Of gold, and spice for the thurible, Is sweet as her hands to hoard and tell? I know not the way for your finger-tips. Nor how I shall gain the higher lands, The citadel of your sacred lips: I am captive still of my pleasant bands. The hand of a girl, and most your hands. —Ernest Dow son. Blindness. No more may I the rolling seasons trace: For me in vain will slender-fingered Spring Unveil the marvels of her bourgeoning Or Autumn hang upon the ancient face Of her calm cliffs the gold and ashen lace Of leaf ami lifting smoke. The oriole In vain will Hash his tlaming path from knoll To nest below my lodge. The sun-swept space Will limn its happy visions masked from me Who, empty-eyed and stricken, sit alone. Yet not alone am I nor all unblessed: 1 know the soul of Niings before unguessed ; The thrill of hands in mine; the .story blown From out the unseen world’s infinity. —Gardner Weeks Wood