Exile
For a friend.)

When I was young, and gypsy heart was eager,
When love was sweet, and carefree heart was gay,
I bid good-bye to home and those who loved me
With laughing words that said: “Of course, one day
I will return to roam the lanes of England,
To stroll, and gather cobnuts by the way.”

Now I am old. The starry white clematis
Clings fondly with the fern beside my door,
The red pohutukawa flings a blossom
Borne by the breeze across a smiling shore,
Yet all I ask is for the woods of England
To linger with the lark for evermore.

The strident, thrilling echo of the haka
Swings clearly through the tropic sky to me;
I watch the maidens sway to native dances,
Their chant is incense burning; I can see
Again, the quaint old inns of England
And the blue bells waving in the lea.
For youth has gone: the reckless soul is settled;
It seeks for home, the old familiar hearth.
But still I tend with care the golden kowhai,
Still loiter down the alien bushland path.
And though I yearn, I wonder, too, my England,
If dreams must e'er content my pining heart.

—A.L.W.

Nelson Sun.

How like his apples is the seasoned sun!
The bud-beams of the Spring have scarce begun
To blossom when they break upon the air
In clustering fruits, yet bitter—so beware!

His form is grown bv Summer but his flesh
Is hard and harsh and shiny—nothing fresh
Save size, a brazen swelling lacking art
You understand—and glaringly upstart.
Comes Autumn. Oh the softening, the scenting,
The blooming on the breeze, the mellow tinting,
The velvet on the skin of slow, rich heat—
For suddenly the sun is round and sweet.

By Winter there's a strange decrease in size,
A turning brown in patches, no surprise
To find the core is rotten, pitted, done
And squelchy underfoot—a shrivelled sun.

For, like his apples is our seasoned lord ….
But Autumn's here! The sweet'ning is abroad
And ye may seek some well loved garden seat
And catch the falling sun-beams ripe to eat!

—A.C.

A Summer Day.

Hill being couch and sky a sunshine roof,
Give to your eye's embrace the swelling earth
Clothed with the heavy tassels of the wheat;
And feel the consciousness tide darkly back
While shrilly the locusts edge
The hot and brassy music of the Sun.

The rural world swings at the wheel's circumference:
Here cattle upon the wall of the hill
Graze in the morning; day ripening,
The hours stray off at tangents picking flowers;
Lastly, the rim of the earth rolls up a rosy moon
And cradles the laughing stars among the trees.

—Denis Glover.

Dead.

And I wove you a silent singing out of the wind,
When it cries in the lonely tree-lop over the hill.
But your heart was dead as a loveless day, and as blind
As a sleep-drugged soul were your eyes, and your lips were still.

And I made a rhyme for you where the sky went down
In measured lines to the sea and the masts of the ships.
But you heard no more than the streets of the echoing town,
And as hard as the sea were your eyes, and as silent your lips.

—Elissa C. Rollett.