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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, September, 1922

Roads

Roads.

The white roads lead to Wellington beyond the hiding hills;
It's the white roads I am walking beneath the summer glow.
They clatter over culverts, past advertisements for pills,
While the hill tops shout above them to the shadows stretched below.

The white roads run the easy way along the valley's bed,
And motors dash along them to the dancing of line dust;
But the hill-path scales the ragged spur that juts out overhead,
And the stretching wires are singing as gust follows growling gust.

The white roads run sedately and are broad and straight and long;
But the hill-tracktakes a rambling gait with many a turn and twist,
And the hill-track dips and tumbles as if laid out to a song.
As if somebody from Brobdingnag had crushed it in his fist.

The hill ways are the fair ways though you stumble over roots,
And the moss is cool upon the banks, the lichen on the trees,
The rocks are tricky walking and the rubble wears the boots;
But he's a timorous traveller that heeds such things as these.

The arching green meets overhead and makes a kindly gloom,
Through tiny gaps of foliage you see the distant sky,
And then the track swings up along among the golden broom,
Above the little harbour waves that frothing hurry by.

The tui chimes his treble note from green aisles far away;—
Oh, glorious in the morning-light which falls sharp on the foam
Is it to circle round the hills above a troubled bay,
To hear the tuis calling and to stride for distant home.

—C.Q.P.