Verse Old and New.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 12, 22 March 1911, Page 71

Verse Old and New.

Modern.' -j ; i ' '.7 j\ "V”\ EW clothes, new hats, new streets, I ■ new flats, 1 1 New restaurants and drinking ' / ' places; New gems and gauds, new shams and frauds, • • New poor, new rich, new sights, new faces, New truths, new lies, new laughs, new cries, Now shows, new fads, new lofty prices, Neiw guilded baits, new loves, new hates, New fashions, virtues, and new vices. New crimes, new gaols, new bargain ‘ sales, New spendthrifts, misers, thieves and gleaners, New foreign earls, new pretty girls, New servants and pneumatic cleaners, New failures? Yes, and new success, New news of life that ever varies, New cheap cigars, new Broadway stars, New suburbs and new cemeteries. New pleasures, pains, new water, mains, New slang, new books, new songs, new dances, ■; j . \ New clubs, new signs, new foods, hew wines, • New “snug retreats”—and new advances, - New “swell” hotels, new “tubes” and “L’s,” New homes just gladdened by the stork, New sport, new noise, new woes, new 1 joys. New names, new fames, new games — NEW YORK! © © © Kept in the Heart. When the white-winged vulture, the Frost, - - Takes in his talons the leaves— The green and the red and the gold—

.And stiffens the silver-efossed Web which the spider weaves? And seals with his bitter cold The lips of the -laughing brook; And waves his wings o’er the nook Where the aster knits her blue; I gather every hue— The red and the "green and gold And blue in my lieart to hold.’ When the tempest roars so loud "* That I cannot hear the clock Tick-ticking upon the wall; When the stoutest trees are bowed Like a shivering flock Of sheep at the gray wolf’s call; When the crackle of the fire On the hearth dies, as desire Unnourished; and the wild winds beat The dead leaves at my feet; Then, like a pleasant psalm, I hold in my heart a calm. When blossom the almond’s snows Drifting upon my head; When the strong one is afraid; When veiled and darkened are those Who look from the windows red, (The “windows of agate” He made) : “When the doors are shut in the street” And the low bird-warblings, sweet With their songs of other years, Come not to.my famished ears.; I will hide life’s music deep In my heart, to hold and keep. •< —Ella .Beardsley. © © a The Plough. From Egypt behind my oxen with their stately step and slow Northward and East and West I went to ■■?. the desert sand and the snow; Down through the centuries one by one, turning the clod to the Shower, Till there’s never a land beneath the sun but has blossomed behind my power.

I slid through the sodden ricefields with my grunting hump-backed steers. I turned the turf of the Tiber plain in Rome's Imperial years; - i ..was left in the half-’drawp furrow" wlll-n Cpridlpnus <*aine Giving'liis farm for the kprum’s stir 1 to save his'nation’s name.

Over the sags to the North I went; white cliffs and a seaboard blue; And my path was glad in the English grass as my stout red Devons drew; -• ••• j . .i My path Was glad in ’the English glass, for behind me ripened ami curled ' The corn that was life to the sailor men that sailed the ships of the world. And later I went to the North again ami . day by day drew down' A little more of the purple Irills to join to my kingdom brown; And the whaiips wheeled but to the moorland, but the grey gulls stayed with me Where the Clydesdales drummed a marching song with their feathered feet on the lea. Then the new lands called me Westward: I found bn the prairies wide A toil to my stoutest daring and a foe to test my pride; But I stooped my strength to the stiff black loam, and I found ni’y labour sweet.’ As I loosened the soil that was trampled firm by a million buffaloes’ feet. Then further away to the Northward; outward and outward still (But idle I crossed the Rockies, for there no plough may till!) Till I won to the plains unending, aht, there on the edge of the show I ribbed them the fenceless wheat fields, and taught the nt to reap and sow. The sun of the Southland called me; I turned her the rich brown lines Where her Parramatta peach-trees grow and her green Mildura vines; I drove her cattle before me, her dust, and her dying sheep, I painted her rich plains golden and taught her to sow and reap.

hehinjl my .oxen with stately step and sklw I have carried your weightiest burden, ye toilers that reap and sow ! I am the Ruler, the King, and I hold the world in fee; .. . Sword upon sword may ring, but the triumph shall rest with me! - Will Ogilvie.

A Story of the Holly Tree. All holly berries, long ago. Were just as white Us mistletoe; And prickly spikes were never seen, bor holly,leaves were smooth and green. But-”once a discontented tree Quarrelled and raged incessantly; In consequence, despile her grief. Spikes soon appeared on ev’ry leaf. Her wrath increased until, one day, “ The sun, their’monarch', passed that way ; “Ah,” he exclaimed, "spiked leaves;* 5 Sure sign of a bad tempered tree!” Ashamed, the: holly hung her head, Each berry hotly bluslrir.o -red: And red they stave;!, a punishment And symbol of her discontent! — Leslie Mary Oyler

Battle. Thy beauty is bugle and banner—bugle, ...and banner, and prize. I-’inareh to the beat ofitliy heart and the orillamme of thine eyes; < My falchion . flashes, thy smile as I fight to the far-off goal, To the love that .burns like a star on the battlements of thy soul. O, Queen, the bugle is blowing, the banners flutter and stream; Thy heart is beating and beating, I hear it as .in a dream. I grow blind: in my blood there is thun-der;-there, is lightiiirig around and above. I have cloven a cohort asunder I swoon on the ramparts of love.