Verse Old and New.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 18, 30 April 1913, Page 71

Verse Old and New.

Ode to the Lactic Acid Bacillus. ¥ ° AIL to 'thee, germ philanthropic! Greetings, O noible 'bacillus! j[ J Humbly they help I petition, / menaced by early senescence: Evil albuminoids threaten, while I affrighted harbour Phenol ingredients! Happy the pure protozoan, limpid, intransitive, deathless! 1, • with diversified tissues, functionate feebly, and perish: Harmful intestinal flora, low, deleterious indols Frustrate longevity. Come, thou acidulous atom, let me absorb and possess thee; Give thee a dwelling eupeptic, feed thee with minimuii toxins, And for thy chosen companions, colonize mild and benignant Glycobacteria! Come in proliferate power, kind Metehnikoffian microbe! Stimulate sanative cultures, banish these autoinfections! Let us go forward, triumphant, joyous, immune, and aseptic, Unto Millennium! —Corinne Rockweel Swain. © © © The Pear Tree. When winter, like some evil dream, That cheerful morning puts to flight, Gives place to spring’s divine delight, When hedgerows blossom, y wel-bright, And city ways less dreary seem. The fairy child of sun and rain, My neighbour's pear tree flowers again.

His plot is not so fair a thing As country gardens newly green. Where winds are fresh and skies are clean.

There, like some gay-apparelled queen, In broidered kirtle walks the spring; But dust and smoke have eoiled her gown And dimmed her beauty here in town. Yet so the tree is glorified. More gracious for the grimy wall Whereon the fragile petals fall. And rows of houses, grim and tall, That shade the garden’s farther side,— More beautiful for growing here Where even spring is almost drear. Ethereal in the dawning light, A sun-kissed cloud in glow of day, All rosy in the last red ray When twilight spreads her mantle gray; And like an angel tall and white, With murmurous wings and shining hair. By night the tree keeps vigil there. —Dorothy I. Little, in the Academy. © © © A Post-Impressionist Poem. The snaky twilight crawls and clanks; A scarlet shriek thrusts home; The jig-saws snap among the planks, Where, lush and loud, Plump, plastic, proud. The coupons crowd Along the road to Rome. Acrid, essential, winged with eyes, The powdered plummet drops; The beldame’s bonnet drawls and dies. And, foul or fair, Calm Neverwhere Inscribes hie square Amid the malt and hops. Oh! anguish of the slaughtered shaft That skims the sullen looms! Oh! vaguely vaunted overdraft! Oh! savage spin Of twain and twin, While out and in The shapeless secret booms.—Punch.

A Change of Heart. The Reverend Harold Hopkyns was a young ecclesiastic Hie eye was blue and innocent and kin heart was very plastic He preached of Woman as a saint in terms encomiastic And viewed her from afar with an austerity monastic. He met a fair, llirtatioun maid, who deemed his creed fantastic; Such manly charm, she thought, deserved convictions more elastic. His education she pursued with zeal enthusiastic. Till Harold's heart responded with celerity gymnastic. He told his love: ehe turned him down with emphasis sarcastic, Amazed that he should misconstrue her interest scholastic. Now Harold’s growing famous for his sermons very drastic, On Woman’s derelictions, in an age iconoclastic. © © © To a Sea-bird. (Lying in a. ease in the Bird Museum, University of Texas.) In this dark corner, under the dim glass, What breast is this, upturned and white and still? —Why are you here, .whose pinions could surpass All but the lightning speed 1 Why should you fill This niche, who erstwhile must have roamed at will The leagues on leagues are blue. At home in cloudy heights beyond our mortal view? Fat-faring sea-bird, nursling of the gale, Cliff-dweller from yon cloud-banks near the sun; What towering crags of tempest did you scale. Before what mighty winds exulting run ?

And now, by some earth-crawling mat. undone. How low 1‘ find you here, Fallen how far from skies that were your native sphere! You mhy have floated through a moonlit night .Silent o’er Venice and Italian fields; You may have revelled in the kindred white Of glacier-burdened Greenland; or where yields The Indian Sea its pearls; or yet where shields The Southern cross aglow All Polynesia's vast sea-prairies dim ulow. You did not have, like man, email neighbourhood ; All height and all direction were your home; From wild eoast-mountain and sea-ver-ging wood You strayed at will through clouds to heaven’s dome; The earth’s four corners, floored by Ocean’s foam, Your different chambers they, And all sunwarmed for you, dr cooled by the dashing spray I Afar from union with the elements, Here in your lower death you strangely sleep In loveliness too rare for earthly sense, Born of the Empyrean and the Deep. Oh, be forever with us! Ever keep Our thoughts where now they soar, . '. Even as on your wings, lost in the Evermore! © © © The Art of Dining. Now when you dine with Mrs. 8., Or when she asks you there to tea, Although you’re conversation's bright, Remember you’re a satellite. And though you’re full of quips and fun, You must not overcloud the sun. For he who lets his hostess shine Is asked another day to dine.