The Tides Run Up The Wairau.

The tides run up the Wairau
That fights against their flow,
My heart and it together
Are running salt and snow.
For though I cannot love you
Yet, heavy, deep and far,
Your tide of love comes swinging,
Too swift for me to bar.
Some thought of you must linger
A salt of pain in me,
For, oh, what running river
Can stand against the sea.
And then there is this about a bird:
For he broke off, forgetting all,
And sang four pure, plain notes, a call
That startled him as well as me,
It was such aimless ecstacy;
Unwary even in a bird,
A joy too naked to be heard.

This is the magic of pure poetry, and we are right to be proud of our own Eileen Duggan.

The pen-name of Iris Wilkinson is “Robin Hyde,” and she has had two collections of verse published in London in the past year. They are of astonishing quality, loaded with rich fancy, and pulsing with feeling. Her emotions are distinctively her own and her facility of self-expression is prodigious. Both as a journalist and novelist she remains a poetess, and her novels both gain and lose for that very reason. However, Iris Wilkinson has made her place in London, and we shall hear more of her when she settles down in her new environment. I am giving two short excerpts of her quality.