2.

"I am Tane—the Tree-God!
My sons are a million;
In every region,
Their name it is legion;
And they build a pavilion
My glory to hold.
Which shall my favourites be?
Which are most pleasing to me,
Of their shapes and their qualities manifold?—
The gigantic parasite-myrtle
That over its victims piles up
Great domes of pure vermilion
Filling the black defiles up:
The King-Pine that grandly towers:—
The fuschia-tree with its flowers,
Poor rustics that timidly ape
Their sisters of daintier shape
With their delicate bells downhung,
And their waxen filaments flung
So jauntily out in the air,
Like girls in short crimson kirtle
That spins in the wind as they whirl
A-tiptoe one pointed foot,
And one horizontal outshoot:—
The clematis-garlands that curl
And their graceful wreaths unfurl
From many a monstrous withe;
Snowy-starred serpents and lithe
page 261 That in subtle contortions writhe,
Till Fancy could almost declare
That great Ophiucus, down-hurled
From his throne in the skiey star-world,
Had been caught with his glittering gems
'Mid those giant entangling stems
Which he deemed but a dwarfish copse,
So was struggling and surging in vain
To rear his vast coils o'er their tops
And his gleaming lair regain!—
Then the limber-limbed tree that will shower its
Corollas—a saffrony sleet,
Till Taupo's soft sappharine face is
Illumined for wonderful spaces
With a matting of floating flowerets—
Drift-bloom and a watersward meet
For a watersprite's fairy feet;
'Tis the kowhai, that spendthrift so golden:
But its kinsman to Nature beholden
For raiment its beauty to fold in
Deep-dyed as of trogon or lory,
How with parrot-bill fringes 'tis burning,
One blood-red mound of glory!
Then the pallid eurybia turning
The vernal hill-slopes hoary
With its feathers so faintly sweet
And its under-leaves white as a sheet;—
All of them, a//—both the lofty and lowly,
Equally love I and wholly;
So that each take form and feature
After its genuine law and nature.
Its true and peculiar plan;
So that each, with live sap flowing,
page 262 Keep on growing, upward growing,
As high from the earth as it can!

• "Many creatures—varied features-dark and bright still onward moving;
• Tyrants—tumblers—boors and beauties, kings and clowns alike approving,
• To them all the Gods are gracious—to them all the Gods are loving.