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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 6 (September 1, 1934)
New Zealand Verse
New Zealand Verse
Enchantment.
You smiled at me.
My fear took flight And fled like mist before the sun.
The dreaming, sapphire afternoon
Seemed touched with song and wild delight.
The droning of a bumble bee,
Became a hymn of praise to me.
You smiled at me.
I noticed then
A golden mist upon the hill.
Sweet scented gorse, but then it seemed
Treasure made for fairy men.
A soaring skylark seemed to be
Athrill with sudden ecstasy.
—D. G. M.
* * *
A Sketch.
The shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the soft and inrolling tide.
A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.
The lucid and endless wrinkles Draw in, laps and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.
Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships.
* * *
A full score years ago, the curving harbour line,
Rising to the westward, by the bridged and tunnelled way,
Led then, as now, thro' sheltered dales, and on again, to twine
Its twin and gleaming threads, endlessly the day.
And first from town came Crofton Downs, which were as free to roam
As was the tang of Nicholson that drifted up the track;
And city folk knew Crofton as a journey far from home,
The goal of carefree, sunny days, with the night train back.
But the days of Crofton's fields have almost passed
And broad, tarred highways carry
human freight
Away beyond the flowery plots of homes, which risen fast,
Have placed its newly-given name within the city's gate.
But memories are welded with the Ngaio of to-day;
The rush to reach the “Manawatu”; the happy picnic train;
The fresh keen air upon the Downs; the sense of far away;
So Crofton cannot really pass, while we recall again.
—“Maryden.”
* * *
There are lots of lordly mansions
Set in forest and in flow'r;
With their avenues of oak trees
And a fountain all a-show'r;
There are palaces and castles
In a thousand busy towns;
But, they cannot match the glory,
Of my cottage on the downs.
There, the ivy-covered chimneys
Harbour cunning bird and nest,
And it's in the joy of springtime
That I love my cottage best;
There are curtains made of muslin
From my great-aunts' wedding gowns;
And they bring a touch of romance, To my cottage on the downs.
In the little low-roofed attic,
There's a cot, a box of toys,
And a frieze around the ceiling,
Made for little girls and boys;
There's a rocking-horse with pillion,
And two acrobatic clowns;
In that little low-roofed attic,
In my cottage on the downs.
In the quiet of the evening,
Comes a stillness on the air;
Such a hallowed, tip-toe silence,
Like a chapel hushed in prayer;
All the wickedness and worry,
Of those thousand busy towns,
Cannot mar the peace of heaven,
O'er my cottage on the downs.
Let me close these eyes a'weary
Of drab chimney pots and roofs;
Let me shut out all the echoes
Of these cars and ringing hoofs;
I was born and I was married,
Far from flurry of the towns;
And my thoughts are ever homing,
To my cottage on the downs.
* * *
Blackbird.
Note.—Francis Ledwidge mentioned in the following verses was an Irish peasant on Lord Dubsaney's estate. Like John Keats, he became an apothecary's assistant, but grew weary of the town and tramped home again. He is the poet of the Blackbird, as Keats is the poet of the Nightingale. He died on active service.
Spring, with its treachery of warmth that steals
Into each crevice of the sentient soul
Worn with the waves of Time. One hears, one feels
Responsive yet, as some tranced bat or mole,
To influences ancient as the sun
Whose long beneficence is ne'er outrun.
Again the blackbird draws a tremulous bow
Athwart the heart of things, from garden places.
We stay to think that it was even so In cities vanished now, where vanished faces
Were suddenly informed with happiness
From listening to that leisurely caress.
E'en so Saint Francis listened, and was gay
To hear his little brothers black and brown.
Poor hunted Villon heard at close of day
A blackbird whistle in an old French town,
And knew brief respite from his guilty fear,
That poet who sang the snows of yester-year.
And then that other Francis, whose demesne
Was but a peasant's, Ledwidge, whose sweet song
Was stilled by war, heard you, and stood between
The inarticulate who hear and long, And you, blithe thing, interpreting your speech,
Joining in happy concord each to each.
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