David McKee Wright

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

David McKee Wright Poems

He strode across the schoolroom in July,
Great Hector, clanging in his brazen mail;
And all the cringing Greeks, with faces pale,
...

There's a sound of many voices in the camp and on the track,
And letters coming up in shoals to stations at the back;
And every boat that crosses from the sunny 'other side'
Is bringing waves of shearers for the swelling of the tide.
...

In the lands away beyond the sea, where Khan and Sultan rule,
Where they drink their coffee thick and black, and sip the sherbet cool,
They have white Circassian girls for slaves, as well as the Negro black;
And it seems to me in our free land that slavery's coming back:
...

The moon is bright, and the winds are laid, and the river is roaring by;
Orion swings, with his belted lights low down in the western sky;
North and south from the mountain gorge to the heart of the silver plain
There’s many an eye will see no sleep till the east grows bright again;
...

Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn,
Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn;
It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang,
The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang
...

I came up to-night to the station, the tramp had been longish and cold,
My swag ain't too heavy to carry, but then I begin to get old.
I came through this way to the diggings -- how long will that be ago now?
Thirty years! how the country has altered, and miles of it under the plough,
...

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
...

Madam, withouten many words
Once I am sure ye will or no ...
And if ye will, then leave your bourds
And use your wit and show it so,
...

Ye old mule that think yourself so fair,
Leave off with craft your beauty to repair,
For it is true, without any fable,
No man setteth more by riding in your saddle.
...

What should I say,
Since faith is dead,
And truth away
From you is fled?
...

And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame,
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame;
...

The long love that in my thought doth harbour
And in mine hert doth keep his residence,
Into my face presseth with bold pretence
And therein campeth, spreading his banner.
...

Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
...

I abide and abide and better abide,
And after the old proverb, the happy day;
And ever my lady to me doth say,
'Let me alone and I will provide.'
...

My lute awake! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
...

The handsome and self-absorbed young man
looked at the lovely and self-absorbed girl
and thrilled.
...

The heart and service to you proffer'd
With right good will full honestly,
Refuse it not, since it is offer'd,
But take it to you gentlely.
...

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
...

Is it possible
That so high debate,
So sharp, so sore, and of such rate,
Should end so soon and was begun so late?
...

My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine en'my, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
...

David McKee Wright Biography

David McKee Wright was an Irish-born poet and journalist, active in New Zealand and Australia. Early Life Wright was born in the town of Ballynaskeagh, County Down, Ireland, on 6 August 1869, the second son of William Wright, a Presbyterian missionary, and his wife, Annie McKee. His mother remained only briefly in Ireland following his birth and he was cared for by his grandmother, Rebecca McKee, until his parents returned from missionary work in Syria. Annie Wright died in 1877, shortly after the family had moved to London. David was educated at the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then at Pope's School, London, and the engineering section of the Crystal Palace School. Illness kept him at home for much of his youth; he read voraciously and began to compose poetry. He ran away from his family on three occasions, in part because of his unhappiness at his father's marriage, in September 1880, to Sophia Colyer Davison. The evangelical, scholarly and philanthropical tastes of his family also oppressed him and they mocked his aid interest in poetry. At the age of 17 Wright was diagnosed as having a spot on the lung and in 1887 was dispatched to New Zealand in hopes of a cure. New Zealand In Christchurch Wright was briefly reunited with the family of his uncle, David McKee, and his grandmother, who had emigrated earlier. He then journeyed to the Aparima River and Lake Manapouri, and was employed as a shepherd at Puketoi station and later at Scobie Mackenzie's Hakataramea Valley Station. From 1890 he contributed verses and stories to the Otago Witness, and from 1892 to the Christchurch Press. He also attacked the Liberal government, and in particular the minister of lands and agriculture, John McKenzie, in political commentary and satirical prose and verse. In 1895 Wright replied to critics of the Otago Witness 's practice of featuring local writers in an annual supplement: he attacked the view that 'no good thing can come out of New Zealand', and henceforth more strenuously asserted New Zealand themes in his writing. At the end of 1896 his story 'Mates: a tale of the golden coast' won the Otago Witness Prize Competition, being the first of numerous major prizes to capture. Aorangi and other verses his first collection of poems, appeared in 1896, but was not well received. At the beginning of 1897 Wright moved to Dunedin and enrolled as a student at the University of Otago. His academic results were barely adequate, but he was awarded the first Stuart Prize for poetry for the poem 'Queen Victoria, 1837 : 1897'. He failed to make a success of his studies for the Presbyterian ministry and at the end of his first year he took up outfield preaching at Alexandra and Clyde. Wright's poetry flourished after the publication of Aorangi, and from April 1896 he produced a series of works for the Otago Witness. Twenty-four ballads were collected at the end of 1897 in the volume Station ballads and other verses.Their favourable reception established Wright as a New Zealand poet rather than an Otago bard. The poems were characterised by good cheer and moral earnestness. Wright identified country life with manly virtue and womanly purity, and town existence with industrial strife, crime and effeminacy. His most bitter invective was directed at grasping station bosses, and at strikers, whom he generally portrayed as work-shy. In 1898 Wright responded to a call to the Congregationalist Emmanuel Church in Oamaru, where his attacks on the moral pollution of the town aroused the hostility of some district worthies. He became prominent in the North Otago temperance movement and in the North Otago Christian Endeavour Union, being elected president in May 1899. He also campaigned against industrial evils, denouncing sweating in Oamaru and Dunedin. Wright was active in the founding of a branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Oamaru and became its chairman in February 1899. David Wright's poetic output declined in his Oamaru period, although he composed and printed hymns for his congregation's use, and gave literary addresses. On 3 August 1899 he married Elizabeth Couper at Dunedin. She joined her husband's temperance advocacy and youth ministry. Wright also attracted attention for his opposition to Britain's role in Africa and to New Zealand's rush to join the South African war (1899--1902). By the end of 1899 his church's membership had waned to 37. The Congregational Union of New Zealand decided to discontinue services in Oamaru in 1900 and Wright was moved to the parish of Newtown in Wellington. Before he left Oamaru, Wright published Wisps of Tussock. Several of the 'Tussock and asphalt rhymes' from the Otago Witness gave the book its backblocks flavour, but Wright had by now turned from an interest in writing such hymns to rural labour and sights and directed his energies to lyric and satiric verse. In Wellington Wright submitted work to the 'Free Lance' and other papers. His poem 'Wellington' was printed in gilt and black lettering on the glass sliding doors of two of the city's trams for many years. He was now beset by money troubles, particularly after the birth of his son on 15 September 1900, and he resigned his pastorate early in 1901. Temperamental differences between him and his wife contributed to his troubles. In May 1901 he took up the Nelson pastorate and continued as minister for four years, until he broke with the Congregational Union over its attempt to secure unanimous support for no-licence. He still advocated temperance, but believed that the choice was up to the individual. From this time Wright stepped up his lecturing activities and free-lance journalism. In 1906 he bought an old press and began to print a weekly paper, the Nelson Times, producing 12 issues before August 1906, when he merged it in a new journal, Te Rauparaha ; the paper had 'strong Labor leanings'. In December 1906 the first of Wright's contributions appeared in the Sydney Bulletin under the name 'Maori Mac'. His poems were included in an Australasian anthology in 1905, and in W. F. Alexander and A. E. Currie's 1906 'New Zealand verse anthology'. In 1907 he began to write regularly for the New Zealand Mail. His Bulletin appearances increased, and he freelanced for the Dominion in Wellington. These undertakings were welcome at a time when he was struggling financially. The winning of a £25 prize offered by the Australasian Traveller 's annual publication 'Australia Today' did little to stave off bankruptcy. When Wright returned to Nelson at the end of 1907 his family's belongings were seized and his library and furniture sold. He took a lease on Crown land in the Baton valley, south of Motueka, where he cleared a patch and erected a cabin. Elizabeth Wright refused to live there. Wright returned to free-lance writing in Nelson, while Elizabeth taught woodcarving to support the family. Australia In 1910 Wright moved to Sydney. His contributions to the Bulletin increased, and he also wrote for the Sun and Sydney Mail , and free-lanced for Fairplay , a sporting weekly dedicated to defence of the liquor trade. By late 1914 he was editor of Fairplay , and by 1916 of the Red Page of the Bulletin. Most of these contributions were anonymous, particularly while he worked for the more conservative Bulletin. Wright's only collection of verse published in Australia, An Irish heart, was released in 1918 to critical acclaim. The advocates of literary nationalism attacked his conservative poetic and editorial practice, and he became embroiled in controversy over his editing of Henry Lawson. Efforts to bring about reconciliation between Wright and his wife failed, and from 1913 to 1918 he lived with Beatrice Florence Osborn; they had four sons before he broke with her to live with the poet and actress Zora Cross. They had two daughters. In 1926 Wright's health declined. He resigned from the Bulletin and attempted to win an income from the Australian Worker , for which he wrote copiously until his death on 5 February 1928 of a heart attack at Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia.)

The Best Poem Of David McKee Wright

Hector

He strode across the schoolroom in July,
Great Hector, clanging in his brazen mail;
And all the cringing Greeks, with faces pale,
Creaked into jabbering Ks and turned to fly.
Achilles, safe because he could not die,
Cheated and won; and all the lines grew stale.
The life was gone from out the shabby tale;
And back in Homer's teeth we flung the lie.

We fought for Troy behind a mossy wall;
We burned the Grecian ships below a tree . . .
Ah, that great war was forty years ago !
Yet still I know that Hector did not fall;
For when the bell rang truce to friend and foe,
Achilles, lying Greek, was under me!

David McKee Wright Comments

Kumarmani Mahakul 02 March 2019

David McKee Wright is a very nice poet and he has penned many excellent poems during his life span and his golden poems dazzle with time bringing attraction of readers towards him. His poems have great values for humanity. I have read his many poems and reviewed few of them. I am astonished finding deeper philosophic essence in his poems. Very cleverly and straightly he has expressed his true perception in many of his social and natural poems.

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