Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 16, 26 April 1923, Page 28

Selected Poetry

T Ireland: Easter 1923 1 (For the N.Z. Tablet.) We fling our faithful love to you across the far dim spaces, We knock upon your heart and cry, “Oh mother, mother, mother!” You answer, “Who are ye at all? Ido not know your faces, Ah let me be, and cry no more your ‘ mother, mother, mother,’ How can my heart reach to you that is breaking in the west ? I cannot listen through the cries of all my sons in battle, Can ye not hear them even there, can ye not hear their crying? I’m like a woman of the fields that goes to seek her cattle, By day, by night, I walk "he fit-ids and find them cold and dying, My little sons, my little sons, the sons I suckled at my breast. Ah if ye have the love ye say, kneel down before the dawning, And pray that Man, now in the tomb but rising up tomorrow, That He remember them and me upon His Easter morning, And roll the stone from off our hearts that now are shut in sorrow. Oh tell Him that I’m old for hills, and Calvary is steep! Your young lips have the skill of words, perhaps He’ll turn and listen. Pray now before the cock can crow or Magdalen be speaking, For soon the sun and moon will dance and then He may not listen, His glory may be stretching wings, and God the Father seeking, But now He’s clean of His own griefs and rested after sleep. Remind Him when He walked the shore, His fishermen behind Him, How some of them would turn to hate, and angry words be tossing, And how the pity of His love would wet His eyes and blind Him, His hand He’d raise, and words and eyes would falter in their crossing, And in their shame the fishermen would hang their heads and cease. Tell Him to step between my sons, but tell Him to be tender, It isn’t for themselves they fight, nor for themselves they follow. For me they take, for mo they give, I am their love, their spender, My head is proud although I wail by liss and hill and hollow, My little sons, my little sons, oh may He give them peace! —Eileen Duggan.

On Silent Wings There is a flock of weary birds, that go Not south, but westward, with the dying days; They fly in silence through the twilight ways, Sounding no call of joy, no cry of woe. One after one, like some thin river’s flow, , The line goes on, athwart the morning rays, Through the clear noonday, or the stoimy haze, Still winging toward oblivion, mute and slow. No eyes shall follow them with kindling sight, And none shall know the seas where they are tost, When their spent pinions shall at last be furled From the long striving of their hopeless flight; For these are loves denied, and friendships lost, And all the unwanted treasures of the world. Marion C. Smith, in Harpers.

Estrangement (For the N.Z. Tablet.) Still I remember your accusing eyes Searching my inner self in cold surmise, As if you sought beneath a guilty guise; While with subtle wit you mould chess-wise Below, above, and over clouded skies Of dark suspicion, seeking to devise Some quare of circumstance from my replies, As a psychic alchemist might analyse— Sifting the gold of Truth from dross of lies, I knew not then of rumors enterprise, But wondered at a. man of noble size Too big to stoop to tongues that scandalise. Considering—thus now I philosophise What matter if the spleen of rumor flies Caught to a brain that doubts and magnifies? The hydra tongue that adds and multiplies, Distorts a phrase unto a sum of lies. He who fears notfears not to despise. Time closes up the mouth that vilifies. The venom ceases when the serpent dies. Harold Gallagher. Christchurch.

V The Fog-Sea I. The morning is ten thousand miles away. The winter night surrounds me, vast and cold, Without a, star. The voiceless fog is rolled From ocean-levels desolate and grey; But over all. the floods of moonlight lay A glory on those billows that enfold The muffled sea and forest. Gaunt and old, The dripping redwoods wait the distant day. Unknown, above, what silver-dripping waves Break slowly on the purple reefs of night 1 What radiant foam ascends from shadowy bars, Or sings unechoing to soundless caves! No whisper is Upon, those tides of light, Setting in silence toward the risen stars. 11. 0 phantom sea, pale spirit of unrest! There is no thunder where your billows break. Morning shall be your strand your waters make An island of the mountain-top, whose crest Is lonely on the ocean of your breast. No sail is there save what our visions take Of mist and moonlight, on whose ghostly wake Our dreams go forth unuttered to the West. The splendor on your tides is high and far, Seen by the mind alone, whose wings can sweep On wilder glories and a vaster deep. Chill are your gulfs, 0 sea without a song! Hiding the heavens from man, man from the star, To which your parent sea endures as long. —George Sterling, in the Lyric West.

*? Song Love Love to-day. my dear, Love is not always here; Wise maids know how soon grows sere The greenest leaf of spring. But no man knoweth Whither it goeth When the wind bloweth So frail a thing. Love Love, my dear, to-day, If the ship’s in the bay, s If the bird has come your way That sings on summer trees: ' / When his song faileth „ And the ship saileth , Not voice availeth To call back these. Charlotte Mew, in the London Athenaeum .