Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 23, 14 June 1923, Page 28

Selected Poetry

Winter Dagobert lay in front of the fire . . . Each thin flame seemed a feathery spire . Of the grasses that like goslings quack On the Castle walls: "Bring Gargotte back." . . « But Gargotte the goose-girl, bright as hail, Has faded into a fairy tale. The frost-flowers upon the windows-panes Grown fertilate from the fire's gold ''grains Ripen to gold-freckled strawberries Raspberries, glassy-pale gooseberries—(We never could touch them, early or late, — > They would chill our hands like the touch of Fate). But Anne was five years old, she must know » Reality; in the goose-soft snow She was made to walk with her three tall aunts Drooping beneath the snow's cold plants . . . They dread the hour when with book and bell Their Mother,, the old fell Countess of L Is disrobed of her wig and embalmed for the night's Sweet mummified dark; her. invective affrights The maids till you hear them scamper like mice In the wainscottingtrembling, neat and nice. Each clustered bouquet of the snows is Like stephanotis and white roses; The muted airs sing Palestrina In trees like monstrances, grown leaner \ Than she is; the unripe snow falls Like little tunes on the virginals Whose sound is bright, unripe and sour As small fruits fall'n before their hour . . . The Countess sits and plays fantan Beneath the portrait of great Queen Anne (Who sleeps beneath the strawberry bed) And all her maids have scampered, fled. The shuffled cards like the tail of a bird Unfolding its shining flumes are heard. The maid in her powder-closet, soon ' Beneath the fire of the calm full moon Whose sparkles—rubies, sapphires, spill For her upon the window-sill Will nod her head — sleepy, I wis As Alaciel or Semiramis Pasiphae or the lady Isis Embalmed in the precious airs like spinces . But her ladyship stamps with her stick ... "grown cold Are my small feet, from my chilly gold— " ''"> "*'"' tJnwarmed by buds of the lambs' wool . . , go And gather for me the soft Polar snow *'" .

To line with that silver chilly sweet The little slippers upon my feet, « With snow clear-petalled as lemon-blossom Crystal-clear,—perfumed as Venus' bosom." • • « • » . « * Can this be Eternity .?snow peach-cold : Sleeping and rising and growing old While she lies embalmed in the fire's gold sheen Like a cross wasp in a ripe nectarine, And the. golden seed of the fire droops dead And ripens not in the heart or head. —Edith Sitwell, in Ithythvms. T Pierrot was my First Love Pierrot was my first love, That due to him belongs. He stood beneath my window And sang old songs. All the songs of battles And knights that ride; Songs about that love for which Once men died. Pierrot called me softly, Beneath the hedge. "Come with me," he whispered, "To the world's edge! "To the edge of the blue world And the end of the sea!" So, while all the' house slept, He spoke to me. \ The moon was his comrade, The night his friend. "Come, my dear," he whispered, "To the earth's end." The stars were his servants And his house the road. His words were aspur to me, A lure, a goad. Pierrot was my first love! Moonlight on his hair! Oh, his eyes of laughter! Oh, his gallant air! But you should not be jealous, Nor yet frown so; I'll tell you, love, a secret If you bend low: Whether he came at eighteen Or at twenty-five, * Pierrot was the first love Of every girl alive! Mary Carolyn vies, in the Saturday Evening Post, V The Hour of Magic This is the hour of magic, when the Moon With her bright wand has charmed the tallest tree To stand stone-still with all his million leaves! I feel around me things I cannot see; I hold my breath, as Nature holds her own. And do the mice and birds, the horse and cow, Sleepless in this deep silence, so intense, Believe a miracle has happened now, - And wait to hear a sound they'll recognise,. To prove they still have life with earthly ties? t?W,;. H. Davies, in Harper's.