Selected Poetry

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 14, 22 April 1925, Page 32

Selected Poetry

YESTERDAY. Sweet was my childish life to mo Like tho first spring dream of a hawthorn • tree. . . Every night an ancient crone Crooked, silver-flowered as a thorn, Came as quietly as the moon Through the frosty night, with her old lanthorn, And put my childish self to bed With all tho dreams that nest in my head. And the moon’s shadows were silvery seen As hawthorn blossoms, perfumed flowers The glamor of beauty that never has been— With petals falling through tho night hours; And as tho old crone spoke to mo Night seemed a flowering Chinese wave That bore mo to each cloudy cave Where there are mysteries none may see, — In far Thibet and Persia; words Crew into lands unknown, where birds AA’cro Paging in an unknown tongue Of loveliness for ever young. Then in the morning an aged sage Tall and thin as a cloudy cage Came, and we looked below at the eaves AA hen' cool airs float like lotus leaves And 1,10 crystal grass-blades of the rain . I rumbling grow to music again. He said, “We are‘wingless, can only infer What even the smallest birds can see. Outside in their nests they begin to be.— A spark of fire, and grass-like frondage In crystal eggs as bard as the air. They break, as instinct from earth-bondage Aiken man was sightless, before thoughts were. And the music that birds know, to be is unheard. . ■ Though my head seems the egg of an extinct ' hud And my hair seems the crystal grass-blades of the rain Upon the forlorn bine cliffs of the Day Trembling and growing to 'music again. But my heart still dreams that the 'warmth of spring Will stir- in its thickets, begin to sing n tho lonely crystal egg of mv head—hong!, it seems all the lovely wings arc dead An<l only pity and love are left In my wintory heart, of its wings bereft.”

'Though I am lonely now and old, Those rare birds with their strange songs bless My heart with spring's warm lovelinessIt never withered grows nor cold. For the unfledged thoghts within my brain king in their sad and winterv nest Singing their loveliest, singing their.best Of a world that is yet undreamt, unborn, Where never a shade is of cruelty or scornThose wild birds sing in an unknown tongue Of- blossoming worlds for ever youngj -Enrru SiTWErx, in the Nation ' and the V.: 'Athenaeum. "'■'■■? ■ ■■ :'iyt.-r;i

SOLILOQUY FOR A THIRD ACT. * What is this sullen curious interval Between the happy Thought, the languid Act ? AA hat is this dull paralysis of Will That lets the fatal days drift by like dreams Of the mind’s dozing splendors what remains? What is this Now I utter to you here? This Now, for great men dead, is golden Future ; For happier souls to come, conjectured Past. Men love and praise the Past—the only thing In all the great commodity of life

J hat grows and grows, shining and heaping up ' And endlessly compounds beneath their hands: Richer we are in Time with every hour. Hut in nought else—The Past! f love the Past—- • Stand oil, () Future, keep away from me!

v-+ c .i , IZI ai " e " gre thol,glltleSS aotive ' ' Can use the volvant.circle of the year Like a child's hoop, and flog it gleefully Along the downward slope of busy days; Rut some ess lucky, Ulint wretch invented Time and calendars To torture 1 his weak wits, to probe himself As a man tongues a tender concave tooth? This all men bear this secret cicatrix, This navel mark where we were ligatured Co great eternity; and so they have This knot of Time-sense in their an rev 16 ' ~..,.■ , .50 must I die. and pass to Timeless nothing? It will not. shall not, cannot, ni-u-t rot lc! HI print such absolute identity Upon these troubled words, that finding r them n , , , , n In some old broken book (long, long a.vaO, The startled reader cries, Here was a Voice lliat had a meaning, and outrode the years! ~ C Ton™ Mm " m ' in * he Aflnth

MV RICHES. 1 have no riches but my dreams; All crystalline their lustre gleams; Ear Irom : the boundless world of sleep I bring rare treasures of the deep, W lien thought explores the lucky .-treams. Oh ! star-loved rim of unknown seas, h resli halos harnessing each breeze, Aurora’s-fabrics o’er them fling; In‘.phosphorescent glamor siring D.v winding, amber-curtain’d leas. A" ay, away; by lotus shores ■■ Day Fancy-plies the shimm’ring oars; Soon floating gossamers unbind, : And tinsell d tissues of the mind, ■ , ■ lo wrap the pearls and priceless stores; j

What joys the human heart holds dear Have not an easy ransom here. No more I feel the pinch of care; I dread no spectre of despair ; My riches fuse my soul with cheer. —Bernard Tansby, in the Irish ‘World. xse DREAMS. Be gentle, 0 hands of a child; Bo true : like a shadowy sea In the starry darkness of night Are your eyes to me. Rut words are shallow, and soon Dreams fade that the heart once knew; And youth fades out in the mind, In tho dark eyes too.

AA hat can a tired heart say, Which tho wise of the world have made dumb •Save to the lonely dreams of a child, “Return again, come!” WAIiTpR UK LA Mare, ill An Anthology of Modern Verse. XX

WET LILACS. l CO " W «y with the sweetness of this April hour, My heart could break with this poignant ' pain poignant I dose my eyes and I breathe again Li lacs-wet with rain. The air is burdened with a moist perfume 1 am faint in my soul with remembering' Wet purple plumes in the fragrant dusk Of another far-off sprint Love, your footsteps come over the grass Xl ' iU ' as tlj « .sound of the dripping eaves. Love 'your breath on my hair is sweet As the tender lilac leaves 1 am blind with your lips locked close to mine ,1; tho twilight—wet with the rain's own tears. °- 0. Love, can it be-you have come back " ' Out of the silent years? ~ Gl "™ Xo ''' v "> "■ fc *« u«w

IN A NEW PLACE. All that is here my heart has known before, In other countries, by another name; Hero still the autumn woodsmoke, more and more, ; i ; 1 AVill cloud these afternoons of golden flame And here a music that is grave and lonely ' Dies 011 the air like bells without a wind • And thought itself suspends, : remarking only How delicate.the trees, how finely thinned. And here the dusk that gathers on the lake And brings a spell of quiet to the land; * Again will lead the young moon in its wake—- , And at that moment I myself shall stand Unchanged in mood and moons that I have known Nl .■*•>l^, • (M .f... In other countries that I called my own. —David Morton, in the 1 Forum.