A POEM AND THE DUBLIN CENSOR.
(To THE FanTon OF THE "SPECTATOR.") STM,—There seems to be a resemblance between the Military Censorship in Dublin and the one from whose activities we ourselves suffered during the War. Ours, as we all remember, censored a quotation from Mr. Kipling :—
" The captains and the kings depart."
Your Poetry Editor has just received the enclosed letter from a correspondent, the father of a young poet living in Dublin.
"I mailed the enclosed, exactly as it is, to you from Dublin, and have had it returned by the Military Censor, after con- siderable delay. It is difficult to see what there is in the poem inimical to the 'Free State.' I am mailing it to you now from 'Ulster, of which despised province my son and I are proud
to be citizens. JOHN C. JOHNSTON.
P.8.—I wonder if the trouble was this : In thanking you for the trouble you had taken in criticizing my son's poem so help- fully, I happened to remark that he was an athlete and the best shot they had ever had in St. Andrew's Officers' Train- ing Corps, an organization which has now ceased to exist. Perhaps this marked him as a malignant!"
ULYSSES.
"Yea, I will endure As I have hitherto endured all, The waves, the battle, wrath of man and gods, Tempests of rain along the beaten shore, Tempests that lashed the long, grey, groaning waves To seething sheets of foam; and bitter cold When the broad moon whitened the snow-capped towers Of windy Troy, and the slow heavy mists Crept from Scamander's marshes o'er the plain.
The battle's fury often I sustained Sweat-blinded, weary, wounded, and alone; One against thousands, though my sounding shield Stood thick with bronze-shod spears, and, my strong knees Trembled beneath me. Often I escaped, Either by might of arm or cunning craft, From hand of giants, monsters of the earth, Man-eaters, all destroying, vast, and vile.
From Scylla, nor Charybdis, horror one Of the tall cliff, the other of the deep, 1 have not turned, nor given back in dread.
These things I have endured; but now I stand Alone by night, and gaze along the paths.
And jewelled high-ways of the silver sea Towards rocky Ithaca, my kingdom and my home.
Ten years have passed since, looking back, I saw From the high stern of my black-sided ship The smoking. ruins of god-builded Troy : Ten weary years we wandered up and down The heaving waters, smiting with our oars The sounding channels of the restless sea, Till all my comrades perished, one by one.
And I alone, striving against the waves, Upon a floating log, came to this land, Dove-haunted, honey-scented Isle. But now again I must fare forth alone in but a skiff, A little feeble boat, upon the broad Wind-troubled breast of ship-devouring deep. Yet, worse than this thou hest endured, my heart! This, too, thou canst endure; as heretofore Thou hast endured more bitter toils than these. Yea, by my strength, and by my purpose strong I will endure until I reach ray end."
J.WORTHIKOTON JOHNSTON.
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