POETRY.
AFTER TRINITY.
WE have done with dogma and divinity, Easter and Whitsun past, The long, long Sundays after Trinity Are with us at last; The passionless Sundays after Trinity, Neither feast-day nor fast.
Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall, But these are five and twenty, The longest Sundays of all ; The placid Sundays after Trinity, Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.
Spring with its burst is over, Summer has had its day,
The scented grasses and clover
Are cut, and dried into hay; The singing-birds are silent, And the swallows flown away.
Post pugnam pause fiet ; Lord, we have made our choice; In the stillness of autumn quiet, We have heard the still, small, voice.
We have sung Oh where shall Wisdom ? Thick paper, folio, Boyce.
Let it not all be sadness, Not amnia vanitas, Stir up a little gladness To lighten the Tibi cras ; Send us that little summer, That comes with Martinmas.
When still the cloudlet dapples The windless cobalt blue, And the scent of gathered apples Fills all the store-rooms through, The gossamer silvers the bramble, The lawns are gemmed with dew.
An end of tombstone Latinity, Stir up sober mirth, Twenty-fifth after Trinity, Kneel with the listening earth, Behind the Advent trumpets They are singing Emmanuel's birth.
J. MEADE FALKNER.
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