Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 49, 13 December 1923, Page 28

Selected Poetry

The Lonely Sea Great voyager into the Lonely Sea — - r We know how bravely thou wilt tread the deck Of the mystic ship that bears thee on! And how thy grave, kind eyes, half wistfully, ‘ Will scan the darkening way —not fearing wreck — But watching, yearning, for the dawn. How perilous may be the narrow strait That lies, unlit, uncharted, in between The two great —no soul returns to tell ■« * But this we know, and are not desolate: • Thy spirit fronts the darkness, sure, serene. . . God being with,. thee, all is well, -Ella Higgins ox, in the Bellingham (Wash.) Reveille. m A Fragment This wind upon my mouth, these stars I sec, The breathing of the night above the trees, Not these nor anything my senses touch . Are real to me or worth the boon of breath. But all the never-heard, the never-seen, The just beyond my hands can never reach, These have a substance that is stout and sure, These brace the unsubstantial sliding world, And lend the evanescent actual An air of life, a tint of worth and meaning. Shall dust, fortuitously blown into A curve of moon or, leaf or throat or petal And seeding back to vacancy and dust, Content my soul with its illiterate - And lapsing loveliness ? Or tired knowledge Make credible the hard decree of loving? 0, I have heard a golden trumpet blowing Under the night. Another warmth than blood Has coursed, though briefly, through my intricate veins. Some sky is in my breast where swings a hawk Intemperate for immortalities And unpersuaded by the show of death. 1. am content with that I can not prove. — William Alexander Percy, in The Lyric. W. ... - to. Any Woman When there is nothing left but darkness And the day is like a leaf Fallen onto sodden grasses, You have earned a subtle grief. Never let them take it from you, Never let them come and say: Night is mad© of black gauze; moonlight. Blows the filmy dark away. You have a right to know the'thickness Of the night upon your face, To feel the inky blue of nothing Drift like ashes out of space. You have a right to lift your fingers And stare in pity at your hands That are the exquisite frail mirrors v. ' Of all . the mind understands. : Your hand, potent in portrayal, - • Falls of its own weight to rest In a quiet curve of sorrow - v " >On the beating of your breast. / Hazel Hall, in The New Republic.

I Am'Ready — v When I go out from here, let .it not be The hour new Sunrise steps upon the sea, . » Not when young Morn, full-breasted, lifts her eyes, Half-closed, half-opening, in slow surprise. . , Not when the Sun rides high— not at Noon— No—— cannot —that were much too soon. . , Nor yet at twilight, though the day is done, and I, perhaps,: some meed of rest have won. . . Let me go out upon the moonlight , . , far Blue spaces call me . . . and one silver Star . , , Vast silent,.throbbing ecstasies of Night. '. , The Day is not my friend. The little, trite And unessential hours she brings to me . Aie ~ never mine. , . No song' , , , no. rhapsody— No dreams ... no leisure ... only tasks and folk Traffic and haste, the press of Things— yoke Of petty hindrances. There is no time When I can go, by day! . . . When old bells chime, Stroke upon stroke, and that late hour is come When all small sounds of day are stricken dumb— When the eternal majesty of stars Has flung a radiance on the misty bars Of Time and Space, and shown them only mist Let me go out —and keep my age-long tryst "With the great Presences of Midnight. . . They Are mine own people . . . know me, every way . , „ Not anything that is misunderstood— No questioning of evil or of > good In those wide realms where flooding- moonlight plays. Barbara Young, in the Japan Times, V Deserted Farm Lover of solitude and of the hills, You have forgotten man and all his ways; You have forgotten man, and silence fills .- The weightless hours of your autumn days. You have touched apple trees until you are As whimsical, as gnarled; and kneeling deep In grasses, drowsy-eyed, you trace the star Which heralds twilight and a gentle sleep. Ah, happy Lingerer, who knows no time That is not beautiful! And -who may dream With wild plum and with hawthorn as they lime Your gray sides softly as a summer stream! Long after I.am dust you will remain To look upon the grave fields and the rain. —Mabel Simpson, in the New York Tribune. «? In The Wood Let now the cold snow On the earth stay to comfort me; And now come in All friendly, furry things That are my company. O Sun, • , . Look coldly like a hollow glass! 0 Moon, •• A frozen flower be I Sun and Moon, Melt not the cold, cold snow, And let no human thing . v - Come near to me; Only the wood’s sad company, That takes the chill of . snow Exultantly ! 0 friendly, furry things, What does the cold, cold snow . Do for us? Does it not . lie One day in a deep drift over us? ■ We -• • • Dreamless in our own company? .' —Ena Limebeer, in the Nation and the Athenaeum.