Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, 19 January 1922, Page 24

Selected Poetry

A Blessing May your home all blessed be, A home and wild flower sanctuary. May still crocus candles glow With hanging drops of driven snow. With celandine and spiking squills And wide-awoken daffodils; Closed and tattered tulips creaking Stalk to stalk; mimosa seeking Levels where her sulphur springs May powder faintly whirring wings; And sudden-green your garden stay From front of March till fall of May. When your Spring to Summer grows May the puffed and'rampant rose Mingle scent with scent of stocks. May sweet peas in fluttering flocks More your heart than twigs entwine. May the dancing columbine In her frock of frailest blue Hold your heart entangled too. May Jacob’s bells below you chime Whilst you his light ladder climb. May Solomon’s seal, white row on row, . Chime above you, and below May lilies of the valley chime And tell the time below the lime. IP So, when rich Autumn fills your figs , And breathes bloom on your grapes. May grigs Hop in the heavy grass when pops The glowing'gorse. May mushroom tops With gills of pink and domes of cream Amid" your dewy meadows gleam. And when winged dragons, horned and blue’, With oozy, hidden haunts in view, Vie with the last bees booming by— When late birds ride the racing sky— May soon your fasting garden sing The coming Festival of Spring. Geoffrey Dearmer, in the London Outlook. V Ruxton Creek Alone through dusk he sat — Safe in Bayou Salade above the Platte,. Safe from the rumbling dust to Santa Fe, Cool in the woven spruce that curtained day, While good Panchito browsed along the sage Beyond the picket-fire; it was an age For picket-fires. Broiled beaver-tail was good, Better than dripping —cedar-wood Was sweet in flapping, snapping, crackling bright Alone', the boy, Bayou Salade, and Night. I And much was in the fire: green Sandhurst, cricket — (WJiat would Panchito think of Sandhurst cricket, Or Euclid, Covent Garden, polka-dancers ?) Panchito would not mind Diego’s lancers, For there was fine hot galloping in Spain, x Good fun, those civil wars, to come again ! , And more was in the fire: How might he seek A trail through Africa to Mozambique, A Liverpool to Borneo, Or down through Canada to Mexico ?

An idle hand_crept through his hunting vest, Where Isabella’s cross had touched his breast, And Drake, and Cook, and Raleigh stood around Till he was sound asleep upon the ground, i And stars swept up in royal gallopade, And night was purple in Bayou Salade, Shout, little stream, hurst into racing flame, For in you burns the spirit of a name Sweep till the seven seas 'have felt your foam, Thunder on every shore. The world is home. —Thomas Hornsby Ferril, in the Denver Times. * Three Men Entered the Desert Alone Three men entered the desert alone. But one of them slept like a sack of stone As the waggon toiled and plodded along, And one of them sang a drinking song He had heard at the bar of The Little Cyclone. Then he too fell asleep at last, While the third one felt his soul grow vast As the circle of sand and alkali. His soul extended and touched the sky, His old life dropt as a dream that is past, As the sand slipt off from the waggon wheel — The shining sand from the band of steel, While the far horizon widened and v grew Into something he dimly felt he" knew, And Had always known, that had just come true. His vision rested on ridges of sand, And a far-off horseman who seemed to stand On the edge of the worldin an orange glow Rising to rose and a lavender tone, With an early start in a turquoise band. And his spirit sang like a taper slim, As the slow wheels turned on the desert’s rim Through the wind-swept stretches of sand and sky; He had entered the desert to hide and fly, But the spell of the desert had entered him. Three men entered the desert alone. One of them slept like a sack of stone, One of them reached till he touched the sky. The other one dreamed, while the hours went by, Of a girl at the bar of The Little Cyclone. —Alice Corbin, in the InternrjrDiyest. The only Peace $ His message of the ages to mankind, A boon from Heaven sent; To nations wearied, sick, and halt, and blind . To people sad and dead in mind; “His peace” shall bring content. But first a hearing, fair and true, must take The place of doubting mood, That would rely upon itself to" make Amends that human force could break ; Nor keep, when “evil” wooed. 0, Peace of Christ! So often set aside! Once more we pray on knee: “Let Christmas peace this time through the world wide, Now and forever to abide And rest in tryst with Thee!” . , Rev. John H. Dooley, in the Irish World.