Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, 24 November 1921, Page 24

Selected Poetry

Old King Cole (After W. B. Yeats) ■ Of an old King in a story From the gray sea-folk I have heard, Whose heart was no more broken Than the wings of a bird. As soon as the moon was silver And the thin stars began, He took his pipe and his tankard, Like an old peasant man. And three tall shadows were with him S, And came at his command; / And played before him forever The fiddles of fairy-land. And he died in the young summer Of the world's desire; Before our hearts were broken Like sticks in a fire. K. Chesterton, in the New Witness. Hymn to the Stars Ay! there ye shine, and there have shone, In one eternal "hour of prime"; Each rolling, burningly, alone, Through boundless space and countless time. Ay ! there ye shine, the golden d^ws That pave the realms where seraphs trod; There through that echoing vault diffuse The song of choral worlds to God. Ye visible spirits! bright as erst Young Eden's birthright saw ye shine On all her flowers and fountain first, Ye sparkle from the land divine; Yes! bright as then ye smiled to catch The music of a sphere so fair, To hold your high, immortal watch, And gird your God's pavilion there. Gold frets to dust yet there ye are: Time rots the diamond; there.ye roll In primal light, as if each star Enshrined an everlasting soul. And do they not? since yon bright throngs One all-enlightening Spirit owns, ' Praised here by pure sidereal tongues, Eternal, glorious, blest, and lone. \ Could man but see what ye have seen, Unfold awhile the shrouded past, From all that is, to what has been; The glance how rich, the range how vast; The birth of time; the rise, the fall Of empires; myriads, ages flown; Thrones, cities, tongues, arts, worships; all The things whose echoes are not gone. Ye saw red Zoroaster send His soul into your mystic reign; ...&', Yo saw the adoring Sabian band, . The living hills his mighty fane; Beneath his blue and beaming sky, He worshipped at your lofty shrine, And deemed he saw, with gifted eve, The Godhead, in his works divine. And there ye shine, as if to mock The children of an earthly sire; The storm, the bolt, the earthquake's shock, The red volcano's cat'ract fire. Drought, famine, plague, and blood, and flame, All nature's ills, and life's worst woes, ';

Are naught to you: yo smile the same, And scorn alike their dawn and close. Ay ! there ye- roll, emblems sublime Of Him whose spirit o'er us moves, Beyond the clouds of grief and crime, Still shining on the world He loves. Nor is one scene to mortals giv'n, That.more divides the soul and sod, Than yon proud heraldry of heaven, Yon burning blazonry of God? —John Greenleaf Whittier, in The Independent. (Previously published anonymously in the Boston Daily Past in 1831.) Sundown When my sun of life is low, When the dewy shadows creep, Say for me before I go, "Now I lay mo down to sleep." I am at the journey's end, I have sown and I must reap There are no more ways to mend — Now I lay me down to sleep. Nothing more to doubt or dare,, Nothing more to give or keep;' Say for me'the children's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep." Who has learned along the way — Primrose path or stony steep — More of wisdom than to say, "Now I lay me down to sleep." What have you more wise to tell When the shadows round 1 me creep. . . All is over, all is well. . . Now I lay me down to sleep. - , 8.L.T., in the Literary Digest. *? An Exile's Wondering Oh, I wonder, now it's springtime back in Ireland, If. buds are opening wide their dew-wet \eyes, If nature's choirs are chanting in the briarland, If God's own smile is gladdening the skies,' If streams are gliding still through ferny shadows, Or prattling o'er the rocks they fleck with foam, If mists are lifting white above the meadows, As on that morn I turned my feet to roam, And waved farewell to dew-wet, smiling Ireland, And kissed good-bye to all I loved at home. I wonder if the fairies still in Ireland Are making tiny shoes for tiny men, The while the wailing wind across the mireland Is answering the branches in the glen. Or if the gull and crow and wren and sparrow Still crowd behind the plough that turns the loam, Or if, when dust-clouds drift behind the harrow, The farmer hums that old-time, school-book poem I learned and, loved and sang 'way back in Ireland, I loved and sang when I was still at home. And I wonder what they're doing now in Ireland, The boys I knew when life was tinged with gold. Whatever it bel know to faith and sireland They're standing true as did the men of old. ; And when the flag of freedom they've unfurled (That stirs each freeman's heart 'neath heaven's dome) Shall as a nation's emblem, round the world, -Be proudly hailed, then o'er the rolling foam I'll fly back to the hills that call from Ireland, Back to the hearts that love me still at home. —James Callan (Chicago), in the Dublin Weekly Independent. ...