Who else that motion and that mien?
Whose else that airy tread?
For one strange moment I forgot
My only love was dead.

Katharine Tynan Hinkson

Katharine Tynan was born at Dublin in 1861, and educated at the Convent of St. Catherine at Drogheda. She married Henry Hinkson, a lawyer and author, in 1893. Her poetry is largely actuated by religious themes, and much of her verse is devotional and yet distinctive. In New Poems (1911) she is at her best; graceful, meditative and with occasional notes of deep pathos.

SHEEP AND LAMBS

All in the April morning,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road;

All in an April evening

I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry;

I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet:
Rest for the little bodies,

Rest for the little feet.

Rest for the Lamb of God

Up on the hill-top green;

Only a cross of shame

Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,

April airs were abroad;

I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

ALL-SOULS

The door of Heaven is on the latch
To-night, and many a one is fain
To go home for one's night's watch
With his love again.

Oh, where the father and mother sit
There's a drift of dead leaves at the door
Like pitter-patter of little feet

That come no more.

Their thoughts are in the night and cold,

Their tears are heavier than the clay,

But who is this at the threshold

So young and gay?

They are come from the land o' the young,
They have forgotten how to weep;
Words of comfort on the tongue,
And a kiss to keep.

They sit down and they stay awhile,
Kisses and comfort none shall lack;
At morn they steal forth with a smile
And a long look back.

Owen Seaman

One of the most delightful of English versifiers, Owen Seaman, was born in 1861. After receiving a classical education, he became Professor of Literature and began to write for Punch in 1894. In 1906 he was made editor of that internationally famous weekly, remaining in that capacity ever since. He was knighted in 1914. As a writer of light verse and as a parodist, his agile work has delighted a generation of admirers. Some of his most adroit lines may be found in his In Cap and Bells (1902) and The Battle of the Bays (1892).

TO AN OLD FOGEY

(Who Contends that Christmas is Played Out)

O frankly bald and obviously stout!

And so you find that Christmas as a fête
Dispassionately viewed, is getting out
Of date.

The studied festal air is overdone;

The humour of it grows a little thin; You fail, in fact, to gather where the fun Comes in.

Visions of very heavy meals arise

That tend to make your organism shiver; Roast beef that irks, and pies that agonise The liver;

Those pies at which you annually wince,
Hearing the tale how happy months will follow
Proportioned to the total mass of mince
You swallow.

Visions of youth whose reverence is scant,
Who with the brutal verve of boyhood's prime
Insist on being taken to the pant-

-omime.

Of infants, sitting up extremely late,
Who run you on toboggans down the stair;
Or make you fetch a rug and simulate
A bear.

This takes your faultless trousers at the knees, The other hurts them rather more behind; And both effect a fracture in your ease

Of mind.

My good dyspeptic, this will never do;
Your weary withers must be sadly wrung!
Yet once I well believe that even you
Were young.

Time was when you devoured, like other boys,
Plum-pudding sequent on a turkey-hen;
With cracker-mottos hinting of the joys
Of men.

Time was when 'mid the maidens you would pull
The fiery raisin with profound delight;
When sprigs of mistletoe seemed beautiful
And right.

Old Christmas changes not! Long, long ago
He won the treasure of eternal youth;
Yours is the dotage-if you want to know
The truth.

Come, now, I'll cure your case, and ask no fee:—
Make others' happiness this once your own;
All else may pass: that joy can never be
Outgrown!

THOMAS OF THE LIGHT HEART

Facing the guns, he jokes as well
As any Judge upon the Bench;

Between the crash of shell and shell
His laughter rings along the trench;