ON THE BEACH AT FONTANA

Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pier-stakes groan;

A senile sea numbers each single
Slime-silvered stone.

From whining wind and colder

Grey sea I wrap him warm,

And touch his fine-boned boyish shoulder And trembling arm.

Around us fear, descending,

Darkness of fear above;

And in my heart how sweet unending
Ache of love.

VALONE J

The moon's soft golden meshes make
All night a veil ;

The shore-lamps in the sleeping lake

Laburnum tendrils trail.

The sly reeds whisper in the night

A name-her name,

And all my soul is a delight,

A swoon of shame.

SHE WEEPS OVER RAHOON

Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling
Where my dark lover lies.

Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling
At grey moonrise.

Love, hear thou

How desolate the heart is, ever calling,

Ever unanswered-and the dark rain falling
Then as now.

Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie, and cold
As his sad heart has lain

Under the moon-grey nettles, the black mould
And muttering rain.

James Joyce

A POET'S EPITAPH

When comes the last long silence to this lute,
And by its plea no more the calm is broken,
In charity, O world, let it be spoken:
No human sorrow found this player mute!

John Black

BAREFOOT SANDALS

Ah, little barefoot sandals brown and still,
Do you long to be a-roaming on the hill,
Flashing down the garden way,

Fellows with the winds at play—

Are you weary waiting wingless, silent, chill?

When the morning mounts and makes the old earth sweet With the lilt of laughing children in the street,

Do you ache to join them there,

To be twinkling down the stair

To the darling dancing gladness of her feet?

Do you know the asters troop in purple gloom,
Too late to greet the love that bade them bloom?—
That they wonder, watch and wait

At the quiet garden-gate,

While you weary in the lonely upper room?"

Ah, hapless little shoes that held my all,
My joy of life within your trappings small,
Where's the lithe and lovely thing
That each morning lent you wing?
Are you weary waiting wingless for her call?

Mary White Slater

LAVENDER

The twilight hangs like smoke in the streets,
Pearly, veiling all the stretches in illusion;
And the new-lit lamps are the glow of hearts
That grope unseeing and unseen.

At the corner a lean young girl offers me lavender,
Offers me youth and romance to hold in my palm, closed—

thus.

She gives dreams to the world,

She who knows nought of dreams—

Gives gardens, and waters, and the young shy moon

Hung in the laurels;

Gives the smoke of evening in the willows,

And the complaining stream,

And the lavender's subtle reawakening of old, dead thoughts.

These, all these she gives, this lean girl—

(A shawl is over her head and her eyes look into the darkness).

What does she know of dreams?

How more happy is she than I who have dreamed,

And may dream no more!

Archie Austin Coates