Before Dawn.
Line beyond sullen line the mountains seem
Fear frozen waves on fabulous black seas.
Forlornly through the legion of the trees
The pallid lances of the moonlight gleam.
The huddled stars a fearful silence keep,
And night, grown old, with haggard features drawn,
Weeps that at length her purple blood must steep
The sky that was her daisy-dappled lawn,
Knowing that soon into the east will leap
The swift exultant slayers of the dawn,
The sudden golden leopards of the dawn.

—“Amateur.”

The Trains of Long Ago.
Here, in the dusk, with Memory's ear I listen
To voices of the past, soft-tuned and low;
I see again familiar eyes that glisten
With happy tears, to brim and overflow.
I feel handclasps that time nor space may sever,
I hear the pledges friends on friends bestow—
These stay with me, e'en though I lived for ever,
Fond geetings at the trains of long ago.
Far into stranger uplands I have travelled,
To peaks that fret the clouds they overgrow;
The secrets of dim valleys I've unravelled,
With furnace-fire and engine-stack aglow.
There where we thundred over straining bridges,
Or crept through tunnels, steadied down and slow—
I see them all again from Memory's ridges,
Those landmarks from the trains of long ago.
There may be some rare Paradise awaiting,
Some Heaven that, in life, we may not know,
Wherein there will be no more separating,
No rage of war, nor peace time's dragging woe.
How can I say, a simple human creature,
Whose vagralnt thoughts fade out like Summer snow?
But if there is, I hope They'll make a feature
Of railway jaunts, like I had long ago.

—John Barr, Sydney.

In a Field by Moonlight.
This is the hour of the cat and the hunting owl;
All day long, the pickers have toiled in the sun.
Now the night is still. From a distance comes the howl
Of a small, uneasy cur, the only one Awake in a world of sleep.
There is a rustle between the raspberry canes
That is not wind-made. The country-side holds its breath.
Who trespasses here, in the small dark leafy lanes?
Who is it, brother? Is it a stalking Death?
We are afraid to peep!
Now there is silence. The Peril has passed away,
The danger vanished. Benignly the round moon gleams.
Nothing moves in the field save the canes that sway
With a tiny wind. In restless, prick-eared dreams
The little field-mice are curled.
And all the berries are gathered—the berries of red,
Casketed yesterday deep in their leaves of green,
Are gathered and gone… . The stars wink overhead,
And the moon, a luminous globe on a purple screen,
Looks down on a silver world.

—Betty Maitland.

Mary Had A Little Lamb.
(Nursery Rhyme for the Modern Child.)
Mythology has given us an interesting fable,
Which may even be related to the truth.
It propounds the moral lesson, as sincerely as it's able,
Of the follies and fatuities of youth.
It deals with the adventures of a maiden known as Mary,
Who had the imbecility to keep,
Not, as any normal person would, a parrot or canary,
But a perfectly revolting little sheep.
The animal displayed an epidermal coloration
As unblemished as the snows of yester year,
And wherever Mary ventured, with a studied concentration
To her side it would persistently adhere.
On a day when she departed to resume the prosecution
Of the studies she endeavoured to pursue,
She discovered when she reached the academic institution
That the quadruped had made the journey too.
The results are not surprising when you think of the imprudence
Of allowing such a beast to be at large.
The girl of course was ridiculed by all her fellow students
And admonished by the lecturer in charge.
So bear in mind the moral of these startling revelations,
O ye denizens of cradle and of pram,
You'll be landed in embarrassing and awkward situations
If you're indiscreet enough to keep a lamb.

—R.G.P.