“Matangi” 6 A.M.

All ye who so love Beauty come ye hither:
The sun's red hands clutch at the mountain walls
While Nelson's waters, wide and mistless, mirror
The precious moment ere he leaps and calls
And casts his silver mantle o'er her mirror,
His glistening gauzy glittering films of white,
To shield the truths of damask rose and crimson
Behind the blind albino eyes of light.
Her world's a petal-bowl of dull red jaspar,
Low-lipped and limned by painted walls of jade,
A bowl of petals from a pink rose shaken
On waters blue between each rosy shade.
And like the island, greyly irridescent,
Her breath-mote floats amid the petal-stains
With seven white butterflies adance around it,
Like yachts who net the seas with opal chains;
And yon's the Boulder Bank within the mirror,
In that rich-powdered finger's idle sweep
That carves the whole reflection into echoes,
As sea-clouds carve the heavens from the deep;
White candle stands for Beacon; and to westward
Those heavy chains of turquoise seem like hills;
And lo, within this tinted mirror could not
Those spilling pearls be slow descending gulls?
For this is Beauty's mirror, Truth reflecting
By transient tint and moulding interchange,
How Beauty is a moment's mortal vision
Shaped in the ebb and flow of colour's range.
Yet, having seen her thus, we fain must leave her—
The shock-head sun's athwart the mountains now
With bronze arms clutching peak and craggy foot-hold
And careful pallor creeps upon her brow.

—Arnold Cork.

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