POETRY.
A SOU'-WEST STORM.
FROM the brooding gloom of the wild Sou'-West The scuttering black duck come,
While the wheeling mallards drop in to rest In the whispering sedge where they had their nest And our loosened shingles hum. There's a threat in the top of the swaying trees And the sea's skin seems to crawl, The sheep and the cattle are ill at ease, A blind swell travels before the breeze And tosses my anchored yawl.
Oh heavy the drops on the barn roof ring, Stars spatter on ev'ry pane, Across the clouds goes a found'ring wing, Blown out of the sky. The salt sprays sting, And the light begins to wane.
On the sodden pastures the splashes spread
Wide stretches of cheerless gray ; In the hollow tree the coon is abed,
The murdering mink to his cave has fled, And the fish have fled the bay.
Then the wind that's wet with the whole world's tears, That mourns for millions dead, Grown mad with the woe of a thousand years, Burdened with prayers that no kind God hears, Shrieks like a soul in its dread.
All life cowers dumb while the dead trees cry, The long dead kings who have stood Through countless years with their heads in the sky.
They totter and fall and the wind sweeps by, And Hell is loose in the wood.
But the trees may crash, and the house walls throb, And the loosened shingles hum, The breakers may rave and the West winds sob, For Faith has a cache that no winds may rob, She knows that Spring will come.
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