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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review 1912

Trinervate

Trinervate.

I.
(Twenty-Two.)
The light trousseau of love
Décolleté—a kiss,
A cloud of hair above
Provoking eyelids—this
Could never come amiss.

A tankard of old ale,
A sleepy cigarette,
With you could never fail
To catch delight, and set
The clock so we'd forget.

If morn must come, and take
The happy night away,
We knew the ford where break
Love-ripples all the way—
What more could lovers pray?

page 10

II.
(Fifty-Two.)
I know not if the debt
I owe to God for life
Can be fulfilled. I set
No value on the strife—
The rage, the blood, the knife.

Who gave me, with command
To find celestial height,
Misshapen tools, a hand
Uncrafty, and a sight
That wickedness must blight

Ere I achieved in death
My pilgrimage? He gave,
Who values not a breath
The dust within the nave,
Or wilderness, for grave.

III.
(Seventy-Two.)
God took long years ago
The shining light He made
For me. Now, if 1 know
The barter of His trade
Of life and death; the spade

I hear, not very far,
In dreams of bitter sleep.
What gain to lift the bar
Of knowledge, if I weep
For them I could not keep?

Thou, God hast turned away;
Where, are my love, my child,
My hope, my strength, my day,
That could not be defield?
Oh, God, Thou hast beguiled

Hubert Church.