Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 39, 5 October 1922, Page 24

Selected Poetry

Days We are the marchers, Marching endlessly. Marching tunelessly, Marching raggedly,— Column and column, And column and column, Clad in gray. . . We shall never double-step, Never run —• But quietly, quietly. Forever, forever. ... —William Newman, in a contemporary, «? Lost at Sea [An elaboration of a recently found Creek epitaph from Sinope, the birthplace of Diogenes and Mithradates, now in Constantinople. See American Journal of Philology, 1922, No. I.] No grave is here! only a slab, a stone, a mound To mark Narcissus fair. Far from this hallowed ground The Euxine vast doth roll his wand’ring grave along, But chiselled words shall fix him in enduring song; In him to goodness there was added charm and grace, A fine nobility shone in his acts and face, His soul full charged with wisest speech took rank beside The very eloquence of Nestor, Pylos’ pride. 0 sullen Envy, thou grim-visaged hateful Power, That lov’st to drown the good and great before their hour! Came there no sudden flush and blush of shame to climb The evil ladder of thy narrow corrugated brow, Mounting from wrinkled round to redd’ning round, what time Thou saw’st the young and brave Narcissus die, and how? —David M. Robinson. Ireland, 1922 Betwixt the hills of grief and death, She moves upon her thornclad road For others peace and wealth, God saith, For her the rod, the Cross, the load. “Oh Holy Mother, bloody dew Drips down your cheeks for us who sinned. Hear you not Mary calling you, And God’s own anguish in the wind?” Dark women touch your robe of gold And. kiss the silver dust away, Who keened by Calvary Hill of old And watched through Crucifixion Day. “Oh black-robed women, widowed ones! Who sit at every river ford, You wring the shrouds of brothers, sons, You washed the Body of the Lord!” The ghosts of all the starved and slain Rise from their graves about her head, . With martyrs, prophets in their pain, And phantoms of her lovers dead. “Oh Ireland, thou 'art set with few To bears world’s woe like Sorrow’s star, How faintly Heaven weeps for you And Mary cries unheard afar!” —Shane Leslie, in the New Witness.

The Irish Mother Long years have passed since when a child I heard it, Sweet Irish tongue so full of melody Yet memory oft like strains of sweetest music, Recalls my mother fond “A gra ma chree.” When ‘pain or grief oppressed me, how caressing How soft. “Alanna” as she stroked my hair; What other tongue hath terms of fond endearment . That can with these in tenderness compare? “Acushla”; sure the hurt were past all healing, That was not soothed when that fond term was heard, “Asthore”; the pulses of my heart, receding, Would thrill responsive to that loving word. “Mavourneen”; time and place and distance vanish, A child once more beside my mother’s knee; I hear her gently calling mo “Mavourneen,” And in her eyes the tender love-light see. What matter whether dark my hair or golden, She greeted me her ‘colleen bawn” most fair; To other eyes I might be all unlovely, I was her “colleen dhas” beyond compare. Long years have passed, alas! since last I heard it, That sweetest music to my listening ear; My mother’s voice, I hope, when life is ended, “Cead mile failte” once more I shall hear. — Father Fitzgerald, in the Irish World. Two Roads Life held her hands behind her back (I knew that Life was rich), And as she faced me, starry-eyed, She simply asked me —“Which?” A Road she held in either hand — A Road where I must go; But which would prove the better one Not even Life could know. Like greedy children who must choose Of treasures, I was loath To take the right and leave the left, Because I wanted both. And who shall say what spirit rules When Contradiction goads Some part of us toward either choice Of Life’s two different roads? • But life was urging me to choose (The ways of Life are swift), . And so I closed my eyes and reached A hand for either gift. And as I walked, sometimes alone, I questioned Life one day—- “ What fairer things might I have found Along the,other way?” And Life assured me with a smile — “Some thoughts will always yearn To know the still untasted joys Down Roads we never turn. • “Some sad regret is sure to come For ways we did not know, But something worth the finding lies Whichever way we go.” • Nan Terrrell Reed, in the New York Times.