The New Zealand Reader
The Terraces
The Terraces.
I.
From the low sky-line of the hilly range
The White Terrace, Rotomahana.
Before them, sweeping down its dark-green face
Into the lake that slumbered at its base,
A mighty cataract—so it seemed—
Over a hundred steps of marble streamed
And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow;
Flat steps, in flights half-circled—row o'er row,
Irregularly mingling side by side;
They and the torrent-current wide,
All rosy-hued, it seemed with sunset's glow.—
But what is this!—no roar, no sound,
Disturbs that torrent's hush profound!
The wanderers near and nearer come—
Still is the mighty cataract dumb!
A thousand fairy lights may shimmer
With tender sheen, with glossy glimmer,
O'er curve advanced and salient edge
Of many a luminous water-ledge;
A thousand slanting shadows pale
May fling their thin transparent veil
O'er deep recess and shallow dent
In many a watery stair's descent:
Yet, mellow-bright, or mildly dim,
Both lights and shades—both dent and rim—
Each wavy streak—each warm snow-tress—
Stand rigid, mute and motionless!
No faintest murmur—not a sound—
Relieves that cataract's hush profound:
No tiniest bubble, not a flake
Of floating foam is seen to break
The smoothness where it meets the lake:
Along that shining surface move
(Destroyed in 1886.)
No ripples; not the slightest swell
Rolls o'er the mirror darkly green,
Where, every feature limned so well—
Pale, silent, and serene as death—
The Cataract's image hangs beneath
The Cataract—but not more serene,
More phantom-silent than is seen
The white rose-hued reality above.
II.
They paddle past—for on the right
Another Cataract comes in sight;
Another broader, grander flight
Of steps—all stainless, snowy bright!
They land—their curious way they track
Near thickets made by contrast black;
And then that wonder seems to be
A Cataract carved in Parian stone,
Or any purer substance known—
Agate or milk chalcedony!
Its showering snow-cascades appear
Long ranges bright of stalactite,
And sparry frets and fringes white,
Thick-falling, plenteous, tier o'er tier;
Its crowding stairs in bold ascent
Piled up that silvery-glimmering height,
Are layers, they know,—accretions slow,
Of hard siliceous sediment.
For as they gain a rugged road,
And cautious climb the solid rime,
Each step becomes a terrace broad—
Each terrace a wide basin brimmed
With water, brilliant, yet in hue
The tenderest delicate harebell-blue
Deepening to violet!
Slowly climb
The twain, and turn from time to time
To mark the hundred baths in view—
Crystalline azure, snowy-rimmed—
The marge of every beauteous pond
Curve after curve—each lower beyond
The higher—out-sweeping white and wide,
Like snowy lines of foam that glide
O'er level sea-sands lightly skimmed
By thin sheets of the glistening tide.
(" Ranolf and Amohia").