Another in our series of posts on authors with works published in 1924.
Maud R Liston c1900
A prolific verse-maker, Maud Renner Liston was born in Adelaide in 1875, the fourth of seven children of William Liston and Marion J Liston of Kapunda and Westbourne Park. Her work began appearing in South Australian newspapers before the First World War. She was interested in art and writing, publishing essays on “Revolution in art” and Emily Dickinson, as well as poems inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. A play she wrote for children, “Cinderella’s Party”, was published as far afield as Argentina, London and Alaska, while her poem, “Birdmen” was highly placed in an American literary competition. She continued publishing into the 1930s, until ill health led her to being admitted to a Home for Incurables in 1935, where she died in 1944.
Her poem, “Childhood Memories”, is one of six of her pieces published in 1924.
~
Childhood Memories
An infant all aware and warm
Lying upon the grass.
The kind old dog that licked my arm
Darkly as in a glass.
This image, as they come and go,
Gleams to the inward eye.
Sharp etched upon life’s ebb and flow
That drowns sweet memory.
The night when fiery flames glowed hot.
Sparks soared in summer air.
The day I sought, but found it not,
A wondrous blossom fair.
The times I suffered for a lie,
Such treacherous defence
The child, a dreamer, still must try,
At odds with common sense.
My father had a fighter’s bliss
In tempest’s flash and frown;
And my short steps companioned his,
As he paced up and down.
If I, in scenes remembered best,
See not my mother clear,
A shielding wall, a sheltering breast,
I know and feel her near.
And I recall that late or soon
She held me up to see
“The Lady Moon, the Lady Moon”—
Her words were sweet to me.
Each memory stamped on sense and mind
Plucked from forgetfulness,
The present to the past doth bind,
The larger to the less.
The faithful kindness of a friend
Moves me as in the past.
Love holds me to the end of end—
This I believe at last.
— Maud R Liston, Adelaide.
~
References
Liston, Maud R, “Birdmen”, Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record, 20 Dec 1929:10. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/109388684 accessed 03/12/24
Liston, Maud R, “Childhood Memories”, Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record, 19 Dec 1924: 12. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/109322820# accessed 17/11/24
“Maud Renner Liston”, AustLit database entry: https://www-austlit-edu-au.ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/austlit/page/A31546 accessed 17/11/24
Source of image: State Library of South Australia, Maud Liston, photograph [B 68426]: https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+68426 accessed 03/12/2024
