POETRY.
WANDERING WISHES.
I LONG to leave city and book and pen, The square-built house, the streets of men, The pent-up gardens, the decorous dress, The long-drawn crisis, the patriot Press.
I could live for a year and never desire A single glance at the latest wire, Cricket or Kaffirs, shipwrecks or shares, Do you think that the penniless vagabond cares P I will travel the road that I never have trod, Flung over the downs like an arrow of God,
The open spaces, the infinite air,
And the tombs of dead Kings that are sleeping there.
I will go to the forest I never have seen, Where the waters are cool and the ways are green, And watch like a vision of far-away seas Blue spaces that open and close in the trees.
I will traverse the country I never have known, On the path that men followed to conquer a throne ; The endless journey that girdles the world, To the ultimate grave where the banner is furled. Or I will go back to the country I know, Where the sea and the cliffs are embattled below, And the moorland spreads out like a wonderful dream Of a purple robe with a silver seam, Where the curlew calls shrill, and the scent of the peat Warns the rash treading of treacherous feet; And when I am dead they may write, if they list, "He loved the good sunshine, he loved the grey mist."
A. C. MEDD.
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