Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 33, 23 August 1923, Page 28

Selected Poetry

Before Sleep 0 child of struggle, here's the night! • Then rest, then rest. Let peace come nestle on your brow. Put out the light— Nor back to the old battle hark. Draw down the shades, Put out the light. And in your soul v Put out the dark. —Agnes Lee, in Faces and Open Boors. Your Own Fair Youth Your own fair youth, you care so little for it, Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances Of time and change upon your happiest fancies. I keep your golden hour, and will restore it. If ever in time to come, you would explore it— Your old self, whose thoughts were like last year's pansies, Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances; In my unfailing praises now I store it. To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging, I shall be then a treasury where your gay, Happy, and pensive past unaltered is. I shall be then a garden charmed from changing, In which your June has never passed away. Walk there awhile among my memories. —Alice Meynell, in Poems. Oasis Let them go by—the heats, the doubts, the strife; I can sit here and care not for them now, Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life Once more know not how. There is a murmur in my heart; I hear Faint ! so —some air I used to sing; It stirs my sense; and odors dim and dear The meadow-breezes bring. Just this way did the quiet twilights fade Over the fields and happy homes of men, While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade, Long since—l know not when. —Professor Edward Dowden, in the Irish Weekly. Sand Lily Prone I lie while turquoise desert dome Goes grayly into purple. Should I stay rooted there will be gray Again, then a rose dawn, And always blue at mid-day. 0 splendid slow march of colors! Each slips a sheath that flutters down To tint a mood and warm this ivory lily Growing beside my outstretched hand. Sand lily, has your quartz-cold 'cup , Been filled with mellow sun ? Have vagabond winds brushed past to Spray your heart with pollen? And have you made a hard round seed Against the day your petals fall? Sand lily, I also know the stir Of mystical metabolism The pulse of thirsty roots that sought The cool spring under blackness — That's why I lie here, earth-caught. —Faith Maris, in the Lyric West (Los Angeles).-

They Do Not Live They do who choose the middle way, Whom ecstasy and anguish have not known, Who scale no trembling heights, nor plumb the lone Depths of an aching darkness in bright day. They miss the passion with the pain, the gay High tides that sweep the spirit to its own, The lifting surge of music, the dear tone Of a loved voice in pleading or in play. They miss the hurts and stumblings; surely fear Is never theirs, nor groping in the night; In their serene cool weather come no dread Torrents or tempests to corrupt their sight, Nor any rainbow; neither do they hear The sea, nor does the thunder wake these dead. —lrwin Ed man, in Public Opinion (London). Beauty I shall be ever near thee; snow or rain Serve but to lend new wonders to the light I hold to lead thee, and my very sight Makes pleasure flourish at the root of pain. Youth with its passions, age with its deep desires, Princes or paupers are to me the same; Back to the moon I fling the fainting flame, Snatched from the western hearth of dying fires. He that keeps faith with me will surely find My substance in the shadows on the deep, My spirit in the courage that men keep Though all the stars burn out and Heaven goes blind. When sorrow smites thee, look! my joy is neaT, Flashing like sunlight on a falling tear. —John Cross, in the Yale Review. sp After the War They all go by . . . the plangent Avars. , R. L. Stevenson. They all go by, the pitiless, plangent wars, They all go by and leave the altered world Unaltered. Underneath the hawthorn tree The shepherd tells his tale, and o'er the sea Tho ships are sailing with their wings unfurled, Spring blows her clarion and the skylark soars. The ancient mysteries are now ,as then Millions have passed, Earth heeds it not and smiles, The roads outstretch their gray monotonous miles, The ageless course of things begins again. This loved hillside is beautiful as when The clangorous trumpets blared, and when the isles And all the mountains from their deep defiles Answered the summons with a stern "Amen." H. Hallard, in the Cornhill Magazine. *? Luck Some there are that love and win, And some that love and lose, Some girls take what they can get, And some girls choose. Some there' are find joy in life, And some that only bear it. / Some throw their luck away, And some snatch and wear it. Life is like a Market Day That may be dark or sunny, White roses may go begging there And cabbages make money. Since I'm not sure of anything Beyond the present minute, I think I'll put a little love *'* And some singing in it! —Louise Driscoll, in Current Opinion.