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SONNETS OF TIME.

I.THE REAPER.
Time, reaping late and early, heard me singing
The rain-washed grassy way was very green;
And all the sky with laughter seemed to lean
Low to the happy sod where joy was swinging
A tufted weedy bloom to swift birds winging,
Bill-full, to small grey nests that hung unseen.
Time sighed, remembering summers that had been;
I sang, for all the blossom bells were ringing.

I ran to see the face of that old reaper,
Turned westward from the morning and the sun,
Whose scythe laid low what all the winds had sown.
Ah, days and moments! Truths a heavy sleeper.
I knew at last what these hands had done
Singing, I looked down and Times face was my own.

II. YESTERDAY.
Far fading of high birds in homing flight,
The long tide calling to the ships at sea,
The grey wrecks, weedy-shoaled on Memory,
Half-seen at utmost ebb of the pale night
When, misty-weak, cold stars of little light
Peer through the black, high fingers of a tree,
Sunrise on meadows where the winds are free
And harvest dusk before the moonrise white!

I have walked very far with Yesterday,
And talked a friendly hour with many ghosts
That dream down time with faces rapt and still.
Beyond the sunset, far and far away,
Mile upon mile is marked with graven posts;
And Joy sits waiting past the farthest hill.

III. TO-MORROW.
To-morrow is but yesterday grown wise
To the dream-music of a nobler thought,
Dawn shall be fair, by all the sunsets taught
To paint with tender magic those new skies,
Till, delicately kind, the sun arise
And scatter largess of gold treasure brought
From the deep mines old saints and sages sought,
Who perished with the glamor in their eyes.

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To-morrow is the blossom in the seed,
To-morrow is the whole of every part,
The centre of the circle that was blind,
Flame of the ancient smoke, crown of the deed
To-morrowah, To-morrow we may find
All yesterday grown tight about the heart.

IV. TO-DAY.
This morning, with its bough that flames in dew,
Is thrilling with the magic of a sun
That blows a bugle for a prize unwon,
While all the sky has challenge in its blue.
More deeds are here than all the heroes knew,
A grander race than one swift mind may run
Choose clamorous purpose. When the web is spun.
The threads discarded keep the pattern true.

The hour shall strike before the ink is dry,
The noontide find the vineyard still undrest,
The dusk run brown before the love is told.
Yet shall life race the sun across the sky
And win to a passionate and holy rest,
Holding To-day before its light is old.

V. FOREVER.
On these foundations will I build my tower
Whose top shall reach to Heaven and kiss the light;
The morning and the evening and the night
Of this one day that is my day of power.
About it all the stars of God shall shower
Clear knowledge in my ever-open sight,
A rain of fire immaculately white
That flames against the casements of an hour.

Then, drawing all eternity for breath
In master-moments of one conquering day,
I shall have all that was, all that comes after;
And looking from high balconies on Death
Limping below me in the dusty way,
His time-sick menace I shall greet with laughter

David McKee Wright
N.S.W.
The Bulletin, 25
th
November 1920, p. 55.