Kowhai GoldKowhai Gold[electronic resource]Quentin PopeCreation of machine-readable versionKeyboarded by Planman TechnologiesCreation of digital imagesPlanman TechnologiesConversion to TEI.2-conformant markupPlanman Technologiesca. 290 kilobytesNew Zealand Electronic Text CollectionWellington, New ZealandModern English
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2010152366Line breaks have only been retained for non-prose elements.Kowhai GoldQuentin Pope190J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd.London and TorontoE. P. Dutton & Co. Inc.New York1930Source copy consulted: Victoria University of Wellington Library, PR9657 P825 KSaint PeterEileen DugganAnd at the EndEileen DugganThe Legend of the CuckooEileen DugganThe Last LookEileen DugganPlagiarismEileen DugganAnnunciationEileen Duggan"Had It Been You——"Eileen DugganLo, How the ButterflyEileen DugganThe Dead QueenEileen DugganPraiseEileen DugganThe Sea GipsyEileen DugganAny Small NationEileen DugganA New Zealand ChristmasEileen DugganA Maori LullabyEileen DugganSwamp-LandEileen DugganThe Last SongEileen DugganThe Sheep-StealerO. N. GillespieThe SingerO. N. GillespieEvensongO. N. GillespieTransmutationO. N. GillespieThe ReformerO. N. GillespieColourO. N. GillespieThe Court of ArchesO. N. GillespieLonelinessKatherine MansfieldThe Sea ChildKatherine MansfieldSea SongKatherine MansfieldThe Town Between the HillsKatherine MansfieldVoices of the AirKatherine MansfieldSanaryKatherine MansfieldTo L. H. B.Katherine MansfieldThere is a Solemn Wind To-NightKatherine MansfieldOut in the GardenKatherine MansfieldFairy TaleKatherine MansfieldSorrowing LoveKatherine MansfieldReleaseA. R. D. FairburnWhen She SpeaksA. R. D. FairburnReturnA. R. D. FairburnOld WomanA. R. D. FairburnNightfallA. R. D. FairburnThe RunnerA. R. D. FairburnShub-Ad, the QueenAlison GrantI Gathered All My TreasureAlison GrantTo PanAlison GrantSong for BarbaraAlison GrantDorothea at the PianoAlison GrantLoyaltyAlison GrantAnd Shall I Suffer Deepest WoeAlison GrantAged FourAlison GrantConvalescentAlison GrantSpring PassingAlison GrantFrailtyAlison GrantThe Sun-worshipperAlison GrantRed and WhiteAlison GrantMolecular TheoryJ. C. BeagleholeTo a FairyJ. C. BeagleholeThe ClimberJ. C. BeagleholeDespondencyJ. C. BeagleholeThe CathedralJ. C. BeagleholeBritish MuseumJ. C. BeagleholeIn the CotswoldsJ. C. BeagleholeIn the Manner of Li PoUna CurrieFrom a TrainUna CurrieThe MotherUna CurrieMirageUna CurrieTreesUna CurrieAny LoverUna CurrieAdventureBartlett AdamsonSpaceBartlett AdamsonGloryBartlett AdamsonRosesBartlett AdamsonAkaroaMona TracyThe Coal-HulksMona TracyA Leaf from a Fly-bookSeaforth MackenzieA Northern SongSeaforth MackenzieThe Quest of the SancgrealSeaforth MackenzieExileDoreen PriceI LoveDoreen PriceThe PoolDoreen PriceNightDoreen PriceSpringDoreen PriceHalf-MoonRobin HydeRoad's EndRobin HydeDivisionRobin HydeThe TreesRobin HydeParis in TroyRobin HydeGalleonsRobin HydeGhostsRobin HydePerditaRobin HydeRainRobin HydeVisionIshbel VeitchLossIshbel VeitchLightIshbel VeitchAutumnIshbel VeitchPainIshbel VeitchQuestIshbel VeitchLa VieillesseHelena HendersonEarth Hold HimHelena HendersonGrey DaysHelena HendersonRequitalHelena HendersonHeavenHelena HendersonRealityQuentin PopeSonnet for ElizabethQuentin PopeRetrospectQuentin PopeThe Sea Hath TakenHelen Glen TurnerGod Rest MichaelHelen Glen TurnerLamentHelen Glen TurnerThe ReturnHelen Glen TurnerThe BeggarR. A. K. MasonAfter DeathR. A. K. MasonBlue MagicMarna ServiceThe Fairy HorseMarna ServiceSongMarna ServiceThe Noosing of the Sun-GodJessie MackaySlumber SongJessie MackayDead TimberAlan MulganSoldier SettlementAlan MulganSilverstreamBoyce BowdenWet WeatherBoyce BowdenWellington LightsBoyce BowdenThe PartingAlice A. KennyColumbine's HouseAlice A. KennyAt NightDick HarrisRondelDick HarrisShips that PassDick HarrisI Have an Endless JoyMolly HowdenLullabyMolly HowdenEscapeMolly HowdenThe Shining CuckooD. M. RossMaroonedD. M. RossThe FlightD. M. RossThe Kissing of PegeenDavid McKee WrightThe SingersDavid McKee WrightQuestioningsIda WithersThe MailsWill LawsonThe Red West RoadWill LawsonOld ManBetty RiddellThe CrippleBetty RiddellA Time will ComeArnold WallThe WitArnold WallAdventureS. M. SunleyLullabyS. M. SunleyGulls at SunsetM. H. PoynterSpiders' WebsM. H. PoynterMiraclesC. A. MarrisThough Inland Far We BeMary PumphreyThe Last ChoiceR. F. FortuneThe StreetJ. H. E. SchröderThe PhœnicianEric Lee PalmerHousewife SonnetMary HeathChantHubert ChurchChinese IvoryToni McGrathThe ThrushIvy GibbsThe Round Pond at MidnightIsabel Maud PeacockeInvocationP. W. RobertsonGhostsCharles Stuart PerryI Would Have SongsS. AugustTreasuresC. H. WinterInventoryBetty KnellDepressionMarjory NichollsMountain NightLilla Gormhuille McKayThe Gipsy Girl and the MoonRena Dillon MacintoshAt the DoorC. A. Gordon-CummingThe HillB. E. BaughanTrioletFrank MortonEmbersWinifred S. TennantGarden PieceAlexa StevensSydneyArthur H. Adams
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Kowhai GoldAn Anthology Of Contemporary New Zealand Verse
"And as your Summer slips away in TearsSpring wakes our Lovely Lady of the BushThe Kowhai; and she hastes to wrap herselfAll in a mantle wrought of living gold."
Dora Wilcox.
Kowhai GoldAn Anthology Of Contemporary New Zealand VerseChosen and Edited byQuentin PopeLondon and TorontoJ. M. Dent and Sons Ltd.New York:E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
All Rights ReservedPrinted in Great Britain atThe Temple Press, Letchworth, HertsFirst Published in 1930
toJ. C. B.
Introduction
"Poets are always the forerunners of a literature. Its first lispings are done in numbers," declared H. L. Mencken when celebrating the fifth anniversary of The American Mercury, that magazine dedicated to mighty blows at zanies and Zion.
In New Zealand, the youngest Dominion, last, loneliest, most self-satisfied, a literature has not yet arisen. There has been a good deal of writing, dull history and amateurish fiction, but little art. Islanded twelve hundred miles from that other great province of the intellect, Australia, the New Zealanders have heard few of the echoes of modern thought. Great readers, they have written stumblingly. Living has been easy, environment kind, and the nation has become Socialistic and lazy, living in a state committed to paternalism and agriculture. One of the advertisements by which the Dominion has sought to arrest attention summed up the state of native culture. "New Zealand," it declared—"The Empire's Dairy Farm."
But if this has been the state of affairs, it is passing. The great barrier to development of a New Zealand literature, lack of intelligent interest by the country's own journals, has vanished almost everywhere. Publication has acted as a stimulus, writers have sprung up in scores and have discovered a large audience. The future no longer seems full of emptiness, and the foundations of a New Zealand literature are being laid.
Of that poetic impulse which has visited the country in the few years since the war, these poems are representative. They are, of course, uneven in merit as they are different in method. The Celtic twilight of Eileen Duggan, the intense feeling of Alison Grant seem odd beside the sentiment of A. R. D. Fairburn, the sound, so like sense, of Robin Hyde, the formlessness of Katherine Mansfield, and the patient workmanship of the wordsmith, Bartlett Adamson. But there are in this book personalities both definite and attractive. And there are, also, some poems which no future anthologist of Modern English verse can afford to ignore. That is why this book has been made.
1930Quentin Pope.
Acknowledgment
Acknowledgment is due to Selwyn and Blount; Philip Webley; David Nutt; the New Century Press; Angus and Robertson; Whitcombe and Tombs; N.Z. Tablet Co.; Commonweal (N.Y.); Poetry (Chicago); Poetry of To-day; the Bookman; the Mirror (Australia); Bulletin (Sydney); Triad (Sydney); New Nation; Sun Newspapers;AucklandStar and Press (Christchurch); and especially to the generosity of Messrs. Constable in respect of Katherine Mansfield's poems.
Contents
Eileen DugganPageSaint Peter1And at the End2The Legend of the Cuckoo (from New Zealand Bird Songs)
3The Last Look4Plagiarism4Annunciation5"Had it Been You"5Lo, How the Butterfly6The Dead Queen7Praise8The Sea Gipsy8Any Small Nation10A New Zealand Christmas11A Maori Lullaby (from Poems)
12Swamp-Land (from Poems)
13The Last Song (from Poems)
13O. N. GillespieThe Sheep-Stealer (from Night and Morning)
14The Singer (from Night and Morning)
16Evensong (from Night and Morning)
18Transmutation (from Night and Morning)
19The Reformer (from Night and Morning)
20Colour (from Night and Morning)
21The Court of Arches (from Night and Morning)
22Katherine MansfieldLoneliness (from Poems)
24The Sea Child (from Poems)
25Sea Song (from Poems)
25The Town Between the Hills (from Poems)
27Voices of the Air (from Poems)
29Sanary (from Poems)
30To L. H. B., 1894-1915 (from Poems)
31There is a Solemn Wind To-night (from Poems)
31Out in the Garden (from Poems)
32Fairy Tale (from Poems)
32Sorrowing Love (from Poems)
33A. R. D. FairburnRelease34When She Speaks35Return36Old Woman37Nightfall37The Runner39Alison GrantShub-Ad, the Queen40I gathered all my Treasure42To Pan43Song for Barbara44Dorothea at the Piano45Loyalty45And Shall I Suffer Deepest Woe?46Aged Four47Convalescent47Spring Passing48Frailty49The Sun-Worshipper49Red and White50J. C. BeagleholeMolecular Theory52To a Fairy53The Climber54Despondency55The Cathedral55British Museum56In the Cotswolds57Una CurrieIn the Manner of Li-Po57From a Train58The Mother59Mirage59Trees60Any Lover61Bartlett AdamsonAdventure (from Twelve Sonnets)
62Space (from Twelve Sonnets)
62Glory (from Twelve Sonnets)
63Roses (from Twelve Sonnets)
63Mona TracyAkaroa64The Coal Hulks66Seaforth MackenzieA Leaf from a Fly-Book68A Northern Song69The Quest of the Sancgreal70Doreen PriceExile70I Love71The Pool72Night73Spring73Robin HydeHalf-Moon74Road's End75Division (from The Desolate Star)
76The Trees (from The Desolate Star)
77Paris in Troy78Galleons79Ghosts (from The Desolate Star)
80Perdita81Rain82Ishbel VeitchVision83Loss83Light84Autumn85Pain85Quest86Helena HendersonLa Vieillesse87Earth Hold Him88Grey Days89Requital90Heaven91Quentin PopeReality92Sonnet for Elizabeth94Retrospect95Helen Glen TurnerThe Sea Hath Taken96God Rest Michael97Lament98The Return98R. A. K. MasonThe Beggar (from The Beggar)
99After Death (from The Beggar)
100Marna ServiceBlue Magic (from Blue Magic)
101The Fairy Horse (from Blue Magic)
102Song (from Blue Magic)
102Jessie MackayThe Noosing of the Sun-God (from Land of the Morning)
103Slumber Song (from Land of the Morning)
107Alan MulganDead Timber (from The English of the Line)
108Soldier Settlement110Boyce BowdenSilverstream (from Wellington Verses)
112Wet Weather (from Wellington Verses)
114Wellington Lights (from Wellington Verses)
116Alice A. KennyThe Parting117Columbine's House118Dick HarrisAt Night (from Poems)
119Rondel (from Poems)
120Ships That Pass (from Poems)
121Molly HowdenI Have an Endless Joy (from Green Violets)
122Lullaby (from Green Violets)
123Escape (from Green Violets)
123D. M. RossThe Shining Cuckoo (from Stars in the Mist)
124Marooned (from Stars in the Mist)
124The Flight (from Stars in the Mist)
125David McKee WrightThe Kissing of Pegeen (from An Irish Heart)
126The Singers (from An Irish Heart)
128Ida WithersQuestionings129Will LawsonThe Mails (from The Red West Road)
130The Red West Road (from The Red West Road)
133Betty RiddellOld Man134The Cripple135Arnold WallA Time Will Come (from London Lost)
136The Wit137S. M. SunleyAdventure138Lullaby138M. H. PoynterGulls at Sunset139Spiders' Webs140C. A. MarrisMiracles140Mary PumphreyThough Inland Far We Be141R. F. FortuneThe Last Choice142T. H. E. SchröderThe Street143Eric Lee PalmerThe Phœnician144Mary HeathHousewife Sonnet146Hubert ChurchChant147Toni McGrathChinese Ivory149Ivy GibbsThe Thrush150Isabel Maud PeacockeThe Round Pond at Midnight152P. W. RobertsonInvocation154Charles Stuart PerryGhosts.155S. AugustI Would Have Songs155C. H. WinterTreasures156Betty KnellInventory (from As The Story Goes)
156Marjory NichollsDepression (from A Venture in Verse)
158Lilla Gormhuille McKayMountain Night159Rena Dillon MacintoshThe Gipsy Girl and the Moon159C. A. Gordon-CummingAt the Door161B. E. BaughanThe Hill (from Shingle Short)
162Frank MortonTriolet (from Laughter and Tears)
166Winifred S. TennantEmbers166Alexa StevensGarden Piece167Arthur H. AdamsSydney168
Every vowel in Maori words is pronounced separately and receives the same quality as in Italian. The stress usually falls upon the first and alternate syllables.
Saint PeterEach has his saint, and one may dreamOf Francis walking in a field,Another turn where Michael darkSprings slim and wild to lift his shield.A third may let his loving lightUpon the whirling torch of Paul,I dream of Peter's shaggy headBent blinking o'er his haul.I smile for that old simple tongue,So quick, so breathless to begin,That, snubbed and silenced o'er and o'er,Could never lock its wonder in.I kneel to those old dogged feetThat padded on from shore to city,I cry for that old troubled heartThat tried to tempt God out of pity.And what of that poor broken soulThat crept out sobbing from the light,Closing its ears against the birdAnd beating blindly through the night!How could he know except in talesThe majesty, the rune of law,An old man bred to nets and sails,Betrayed by ignorance and awe?Ah dear to me! Ah dear to me!That fear, that flying from the rod,That ancient infidelityRewarded by a risen God.And at the EndOnce on a dewy morningWith the blue sky blowing apart,Each bud broke on my eyelids,Each bird flew through my heart.I prayed for the faith of a starlingUnder the tawny trees,child or a holy woman,What could be greater than these?But now on a heavy morningWith the dull sky blowing apart,When no flower blesses my eyelids,And no wing brushes my heart,I, made surer by sorrow,Beg what seems more to me,The faith of a willow in winter,Or a blind hound nosing the knee.The Legend of the CuckooYoung Christ went groaning up to QuarantanaWith His tall head flung up against the sky.Spring cried to Him from every bush and bramble;He passed her blindly by.Oh, every tree was given up to blossom,And every bee burred in the broken lane,But as He passed the little bees and blossomsWere still with love and pain.And every bird bent sideways in its sorrow,And whispered softly to Him as He went,"My brightness, are you black and lost in anguish,My sweetness, are you spent?"Yea, every bird except the careless cuckoo,That working on in flurry and in fret,Hollowed a nest and cried its own name over,Nor saw His eyes were wet.Young Christ came smiling down from Quarantana—He blessed each bird along the broken lane,And said, "My little pity, it is over,My gladness, sing again!"And then He turned and looked upon the cuckoo,It gave one cry and flew off to the west,Since then it may not cease its haunted flying,Nor ever build a nest.The Last Look"Her dying look was all for you.It touched you to the last," they said.Are you not proud to think of that,Though she is dead?O death alive, is that peak proud Becauseit was the last in gold?It only knows the sky is blind,And it is cold.PlagiarismMy quest lies far across the hidden waters,The lands that touch the fairways are all charted,I'd sooner dock than claim another's headland,Though finds are few now.I know it's somewhere lying on the sea bloom,As tender and as dusky as a plum-bough,—In cold of words and watches of the spirit,I'll strain unto it.And if I fail I will have had the thunder,The bursting, bellying hours of rip and glory,When the dumb sea lifts up its myriad dewlapsOf lowing oxen.But oh, the heady joy if I shall find it,The telling it as if a court were listening,And I a Spanish sailor with an island,'Sire, deign to take it!"AnnunciationMary, the maiden, walked out in the country,Telling the wheat what the angel had told her,The bees tumbled out of the flag-flowers to listen,The birds stopped their fledglings and told them to heed her.A woman in blue with wheat to her knees,Mid a silence of birds, and a stillness of bees,Singing, "Golden, ah golden, with seedsprays unfurled,Ripen within me, O wheat of the world!"Mary, bluehooded, walked out in the country,Telling the vine what no other must know yet,The butterflies flew to her hems as to harebells,The flowers on the bushes shook gold rain upon her.A woman, gold-wet, with rainbow eyes,And a border of living butterflies,Singing, "Purple, ah purple, with tendrils close curled,Ripen within me, O vine of the world.""Had It Been You——""Had it been you——" my mother said,And put my comfort by.I was wept out and overspentTo ask her why.It's sad to see a tree in flowerBlown over to the dust,And mothers love a splendid thingBecause they must.It did not even hurt me much,I was so strange and sore.Ah, when the sky has rained a flood,What's one drip more?It is a way they have in grief;Not knowing what they do,They turn upon the nearest one,"Had it been you——"Lo, How the ButterflyLo, how the butterfly, that paladin of air,To whom blue acres are baronial things,Who takes them as an eldest son the name—Or owl the night—Before the time of wings,Lies blind, without reflection,Entombed, enwound,Forgotten and alone,Till comes its Easter hourWithout a sound,And oh, that cavalier of light,That breathless one,Bewildered by its coloured resurrection,Rides up into the sun!So even I,When wings lift from my clod,Breaking the sky,May shimmer up to God.The Dead QueenThey said she had strange ways and fed the poor,That she could read old books and cross the wise,And that she held much speech with serf and boorFor clog and shoe were equal in her eyes.They said that her young robes could awe the hineAnd set the proudest embassy to school,Yet she would close the charters of her lineTo melt in tender laughter at her fool.They said she did not end her grace with men,But honoured from her birth until her deathThe smallest stirring thing within its denThat shared with her the magic beat of breath.All this and more they said about her there,And I—what was their murmuring to me,Who could remember but her knot of hair,Her eyes like Spanish shells that stoup the sea?PraiseWhen first I read that page I read it slow.I saw the woman fretting to and fro,And then the calm one sitting at His feet.Why did He stop the drudge and chide her so?I was so young that hour, so hot and kind,It seemed to me that Christ was blind, was blind,'Twas well for that one listening on the floor,The other had His comfort in her mind.Why did He choose the idle one to bless?Why did He hold a frowning toiler lessThan bird unbarned or haughty little flower,Setting a holy sign on uselessness?But if He came tonight in by my door,I would, like Mary, listen on the floor,For oh, her heart was toiling at His praise,And it was I was blind, was blind before.The Sea GipsyLips without law and reckless head,Defiant eyes and deedful hands,What rest for you while stars are redAnd little waves run by the lands?Gold shells are gemstones in your hair,And strips of kelp your ribands be,Your ear-rings are the wild sea-beads,Your flower the sea anemone.The salt is crusted on your feet,The salt that shines like all the South,What rebel question troubles stillThe scarlet threading of your mouth?Is it the secret that you seek,The hidden hest that drives you forth,The wonder of your wanderingsFrom singing South to birdless North?The end of your unquiet questMust ever be concealed, denied,The riddle of your hunted raceLies muted in some stirless side.Bereft of choice by your dead queens,Who trod through winds and suns and rains,The coasts of both the Sicilies,The shores of all the Spains.You are condemned to wander still,To share with gull and mew your food,Your minted dower the crusted shell,Your acreage the broad sea-rood.By this strange sanction in your blood,You leave the distaff and the keys,The faggot red, the lintel-stone,To be a beggar of the seas.Any Small NationUnconscienced tyranny,You crouch and say to me,"Yield up your entity!"Of sweet, unlessoned things,No starling changes wings,No thrush its mate's note flings.The lovely ignorant roseInalienable knowsEach leaf wherewith she blows.Each son of Adam's hod,Each warm instructed clodHolds tremblingly from God,In fearful, binded trust,For use unjust or just,His own peculiar dust,His spirit incommune;As tides hold from the luneThe sway that sets their tune.Each land in like degree,Must ward immutablyIts children's liberty.I am of mine the roll,The composite, the whole,Shall you then have my soul?In vain your empery,No haulm can tendril be,No tarn turn to the sea!Hark, and forever know!Single and sole I go,Bleeding, I mock your blow.A New Zealand ChristmasOh, the grace was on it that He chose that country—We have kind oxen and our straw is sweet,We have shepherds too now, and stables and a manger,Had we but one footprint of His little feet!Oh, my heart goes crying through these days of summer,Through the sleepy summer, slow with streams and bees,Had my land been old then, here He might have lighted,Here have seen His first moon in the ngaio trees.Oh, my heart goes crying through these days of waitingWhile our lilies open and our tuts sing,Had my Lord been born here angels might have ringed us,Standing round our islands wing wide to wing.Had my Lord been born here in the time of rata,Three dark-eyed chieftains would have knelt to Him,With greenstone and mats and the proud huia feather,And the eyes of Mary, seeing, would grow dim.Oh, my heart goes crying through these days of waiting,We too have oxen and our straw is sweet,We too have shepherds and stables and a manger,Oh, for one clear footprint of His little feet!A Maori LullabyHark! the bittern calls her childrenFrom the willow-weed and marsh-logs,And the lonely little swamp-birdWades no more about the black bogs.See the kelpies of the starshine,Peeping each one through a blue bough,Hearken to the voice of RangiSinging as I sing to thee now.Sleep, my bright-eyed little weka,Sleep, my huia-bird of twilight, Sleep, my brown moth of the branches;Ate! Ate! Ate! Ate!Hush—oh hush! my little wild one,Hear the stirring in the hollow,With thy restless little cryingThou wilt wake the small sea-swallow.Dearer than the bread of raupo,Dearer than the sweet konini,Dearer than the dead to Tane,Yea, so dear art thou unto me.Sleep, my bud of koromiko,Sleep, my wild karaka berry,Sleep, my red-lipped rata-blossom,Ate! Ate! Ate! Ate!Swamp-LandA vanquished flax droops pennon by the poolThat shares the sorrow of a tattered tree,And still is heard along the dreary coolAn old tired bittern booming timorously.The marsh plant slowly drips its sombre seeds,The very blackbird is a bird of rue;A barren wind rustles the raupo reeds,Breaking the silver bucklers of the dew.God made this place for sallow twisted rootsAnd winds that limp the high-roads of the air,For songless birds and broken-hearted fruitsAnd men who never learned a prayer.The Last SongSong comes to meBut haltingly,A child that stretches hands of faithThen draws them back again,A sun that gilds me for a while,Then hides for fear of rain,I shall not sing again.God has so many singing birdsTo lilt from sunny throats,Proud birds with slow, strong notes,Like stately Dons of Spain;God has full many singing birdsTo mock on hill and plainThe tabor of the wind, the viol of the rain.God has so many troubadoursWith songs of March and May,On pipe and flageolet,To flute of flower and seed;God has so many troubadoursTo sing in court and train,He will not miss my bitter reed,I shall not sing again.Eileen Duggan.
The Sheep-StealerWalled by the silver dusted nightThe hill sat hunched, a troglodyteGiant and grim, whose frown was bentWhere laughs of summer lightning went.The blackness held no moving thing,Nor lightest sound of whispering:No colour showed except the farGleam of a homestead's window-star.It paled at last, winked once and died,Drowned in the eerie, lightless tide.…Suddenly, in the clotted darkAwoke an impish, moving spark.It swayed and halted, swerved and tacked,A quick red sprite by mischief racked,But climbing all the time with zest,Until it reached the hooded crest.Here two white rocks stared in surprise:.They were by day the hill's two eyes,Forbidding, cold, insatiate.The valley feared their stony hateThat made the height a shape of dread—Some vast Jurassic monster's head,And waveringly, beneath those eyesWent talk of crops and market lies.The red spark fluttered to one rock,While rang an impudent, soft knock—Then the man stooped,—refilled his pipe,Scored a thin, phosphorescent stripeWith a sly match, and cupped the flameIn clever hands: as in a frameThere showed a lean and merry faceWhose wrinkles wore an outlaw grace."Laddie," he whispered to the ground,And with swift feet that made no soundA legged and jointed thing loped past;It seemed a flake the night had castThat snapped into the further dark,Stifling a low, exultant bark.Soon near the man began to creepThe misty forms of huddled sheepLike rounded drifts of silent snow;And though they shuddered to and fro,Crazed by that unseen, grim pursuit,Their idiot faces all were mute.One more swift flame, a stealthy rush,Brought back the hill's accustomed hush:Like unreal things, half seen in sleep,Faded the man and dog and sheep.Forbidding, cold, the hill's two eyesStared at the faintly smiling skies.The SingerSlow wings of giant birds of white,The gliding planes of morning light,Drove up the valley, mile on mile,Till, like a ghostly silver pile,The hill-top glowed against the skyOf pearl and misted lazuli.This is the hour of quietness;It softly cancels all the stressOf riot-life in leaf and limb;The fire of blossom-flame is dimAnd no beast stirs: even the grassIs motionless as graven glass.This is the lustral hour: a poolOf healing moments, clear and cool.This is the hour of mystery:The spinning world seems dreaminglyTo swim in pale enchantment, whenFrom day-time's drone of busy men,To secret night's scarce-whispered calls,This strange white bridge of silence falls.Now the slip-rails of faery drop,And from the shadowy grey hill-top,Wind flocks of snow-white thoughts that glowIn the pale radiance, they goSoftly from sight and show again,Dream sheep that walk a magic laneWhere only follow those who longTo change this charmed hour for a song.Steeped in the wonder of it all,The singer passed the shadow wall,And, face towards the spreading light,Steadily climbed the silver height.There two white rocks stared in surprise:They were by day the hill's two eyes,Insatiate, forbidding, cold,But now they seemed to smile, cajoledAs one light finger of the sunMelted their gloom in soft, sly fun.The singer rested by one rockAnd then there rang a tiny knock,As, lazily, he cleared a splashOf random, grey tobacco ash.Turning to watch the far—far goldThat on the moving waters rolled,He saw, in distant, jewelled spray,The sea-birth of the singing day:And ringing to his lips, a waveOf rapture bore this little stave:When lights of Port o' Morning gleamAnd high clouds laugh to coloured foam,My shining songs, my flocks of dreamGo down the sunways home.EvensongSing a song of washing-up—shining clean platesChattering together like a crowd of old mates:Buxom cups and saucers, and little white bowlsPurely and demurely bright like little girl-souls.Hear the hymn to cosiness The tinkling dishes chime,Ringing in the doziness Of evening time.Mollie-of-the-wise-eyes leaves her hard sums,In important apron she has swept the crumbs.All of us are washing up: big and small folksSharing and comparing all the home-sweet jokes.Hear the speech to cosiness The doting kettle speaks,Babbling of the rosiness Of maiden cheeks.Lamplight on the busy hands that fold the teaclothsMagically turns them into flitting gold moths.Round me all the comfortable gods of home thingsFlick away the uses of the day with blithe wings.Ring the chimes for cosiness And sweetly humdrum times,Passing bells for prosiness And high-flown rhymes.TransmutationThe gleaming shuttle of the white moon fliesWith cord aglow to slyly sewAbout the world a silver net of lies.The moonthreads through the night air spillAnd magically float and spin,They change the bulging, massy hillTo one black sheet, upright and thin,Of painted tin.A ribbon of the moonstuff liesAgainst the rata's shadowed feet,And black its scarlet flowers rise,While on the hill the yellow wheatSways, white as sleet.And there is knit a sorceryOf relics in the picnic place,A gleaming jam jar dons with gleeA cozen-gown of jewelled laceWith tricksy grace.I walk with Maud in ecstasy.Her love-drenched eyes are lustral wellsThat purely shine with modesty,I seem to hear the tinkling swellsOf sanctus bells.The creekstones ring like little gongsTapped softly by the fishes' fins,And trees lilt airs of greenwood songs—The purl of pixie mandolinsFar off begins.And then I light a cigarette!—The match flame is a searing spark.It burns away the moonlight netAnd Maud's a drab—the park's a park!Lord—where's the dark?The ReformerThe harbour was a dreaming lakeOf quiet water brimming,Where, all alone, a kittiwakeWas delicately swimming.Her quick feet made a double fret,Dark threads upon a coverlet,Whose level blue was oversetWith points of silver trimming.The blue eyes of the sleepy seaSmiled lazily.The kittiwake swum here and thereWith purposeful endeavour;Her dainty consequential airShowed pride in being clever;Her breast, she knew without a doubt,Had rubbed the ocean wrinkles out,And all the waters round aboutWould now be smooth for ever.The grey eyes of the watching seaSmiled thoughtfully.The hurrying dawn was pale with pain.Wind-furies, harshly crying,Tossed on the pier a draggled skeinOf feathers, slackly lying.Like a street hag whose hideous sleepMarks the drear end that high days reap,The kittiwake lay still—a heapOf brave dreams, drably dying.The green eyes of the wanton seaSmiled carelessly.ColourBlack is the master of the crowded hallWhere all the colours meet; he is the Head,For mauve is tame, magenta badly bred,Purple and brown to languid vapours fall,And pink and meretricious yellow brawl;Sly blue and lissom green and lazy redAre only friends in some chance flower-bed;Grey, but the toneless echo of them all.Black is the regal, universal friend,Who softly brings to humankind his storeOf quiet amity and comfort deep;Who kisses mother night and makes her lendThe sable fabric from her wardrobe doorTo veil the sweet half-death that men call sleep.The Court of ArchesAs a tree splintered on the heathA Somme lagoon rocked underneathThe roaring ceiling of the world,And noises hurledAbout the air, set up a quaking,Tilting the banks, till dried ooze flakingSpattered the swaying pool all overAnd drove the gauzy flies to cover.A sedgy corner thus far quietFrom work of that corroding riotHeld frogs in council, earnest, rapt:Portly and calm, their leader mappedThe course of their enquiry onThe "Whence" and "Why," the pro and con,Whence came the noise, unequalled byThe imagined croak of all frogs? WhyThe marshroof's turbulence?Could He in truth be praised or blamed?An underfed and thin one claimedThe mystery brought punishment,And all should speedily repentDesertion of the old lagoon.His croak of warning ceased, and soonAnother showed the obvious good,The bounteous insect crop of foodThat strewed the surface of the pool;And one said "Fool,This is the last that may befall;This is the end, the end of all,Rich slime and waterweed and logs,All ended … even frogs."And thus and thus they wrought,Weighing each word, counting each thought;When down the feeding rivulet,By turn and deep and fret,Slow tiny clots of red came driftingDissolving, spraying, rifting,To scarlet filaments that lacedAnd writhed and broke in spectral haste.Without surcease, the flocculentAnd delicate masses glowed; and spentTill all that smooth green water-lawnWas tinted like a rosy dawn.And joyously the Council sawThat wonder-change; and hushed in awe!Their answer had evolved!Enigma solved!Forever, now, their soft green sidesWould lave in gracious, soft pink tides.Their loud, full-throated anthem rang;"Oh, Great Suffuser! Hail!" they sang;"Blessings AlwayAre Thine… Non Nobis Domine.'"O. N. Gillespie.
LonelinessNow it is Loneliness who comes at nightInstead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,I watch her softly blowing out the light.Motionless sitting, neither left nor rightShe turns, and weary, weary droops her head.She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.So with the laurel she is garlanded.Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tideBreaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.A strange wind flows… then silence. I am fainTo turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,Cling to her, waiting, till the barren landFills with the dreadful monotone of rain.The Sea ChildInto the world you sent her, mother,Fashioned her body of coral and foam,Combed a wave in her hair's warm smother,And drove her away from home.In the dark of the night she crept to the townAnd under a doorway she laid her down,The little blue child in the foam-fringed gown.And never a sister and never a brotherTo hear her call, to answer her cry.Her face shone out from her hair's warm smotherLike a moonkin up in the sky.She sold her corals; she sold her foam;Her rainbow heart like a singing shellBroke in her body; she crept back home.Peace, go back to the world, my daughter,Daughter, go back to the darkling land;There is nothing here but sad sea water,And a handful of sifting sand.Sea SongI will think no more of the sea!Of the big green wavesAnd the hollowed shore,Of the brown rock cavesNo more, no moreOf the swell and the weedAnd the bubbling foam.Memory dwells in my far-away home,She has nothing to do with me.She is old and bentWith a packOn her back.Her tears all spent,Her voice, just a crack.With an old thorn stickShe hobbles along,And a crazy songNow slow, now quick,Wheeks in her throat,And every dayWhile there's light on the shoreShe searches for something,Her withered clawTumbles the seaweed;She pokes in each shellGroping and mumblingUntil the nightDeepens and darkens,And covers her quite,And bids her be silent,And bids her be still.The ghostly feetOf the whispery wavesTiptoe beside her.They follow, followTo the rocky cavesIn the white beach hollow….She hugs her hands,She sobs, she shrills,And the echoes shriekIn the rocky hills.She moans: "It is lost!Let it be! Let it be!I am old. I'm too cold.I am frightened … the seaIs too loud … it is lost,It is gone…." MemoryWails in my far-away home.The Town Between the HillsThe farther the little girl leaped and ran,The farther she longed to be;The white, white fields of jonquil flowersDanced up as high as her kneeAnd flashed and sparkled before her eyesUntil she could hardly see.So into the wood went she.It was quiet in the wood,It was solemn and grave;A sound like a waveSighed in the tree-topsAnd then sighed no more.But she was brave,And the sky showed throughA bird's-egg blue,And she sawA tiny path that was running awayOver the hills to—who can say?She ran, too.But then the path broke,Then the path endedAnd wouldn't be mended.A little old manSat on the edge,Hugging the hedge.He had a fireAnd two eggs in a panAnd a paper pokeOf pepper and salt;So she came to a haltTo watch and admire:Cunning and nimble was he!"May I help, if I can, little old man?""Bravo!" he said,"You may dine with me.I've two old eggsFrom two white hensAnd a loaf from a kind ladie:Some fresh nutmegs,Some cutlet endsIn pink and white paper frills:And—I've—gotA little hot-potFrom the town between the hills."He nodded his headAnd made her a signTo sit under the sprayOf a trailing vine.But when the little girl joined her handsAnd said the grace she had learned to say,The little old man gave two dreadful squealsAnd she just saw the flash of his smoking heelsAs he tumbled, tumbledWith his two old eggsFrom two white hens,His loaf from a kind ladie,The fresh nutmegs,The cutlet-ends,In the pink and white paper frills.And away rumbledThe little hot-pot,So much too hot,From the town between the hills.Voices of the AirBut when there comes that moment rareWhen, for no cause that I can find,The little voices of the airSound above all the sea and wind.The sea and wind do then obeyAnd sighing, sighing double notesOf double basses, content to playA droning chord for the little throats—The little throats that sing and riseUp into the light with lovely easeAnd a kind of magical, sweet surpriseTo hear and know themselves for these—For these little voices: the bee, the fly,The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.SanaryHer little hot room looked over the bayThrough a stiff palisade of glinting palms,And there she would lie in the heat of the day,Her dark head resting upon her arms,So quiet, so still, she did not seemTo think, to feel, or even to dream.The shimmering, blinding web of the seaHung from the sky, and the spider sunWith busy frightening crueltyCrawled over the sky and spun and spun.She could see it still when she shut her eyes,And the little boats caught in the web like flies.Down below at this idle hourNobody walked in the dusty streetA scent of dying mimosa flowerLay on the air, but sweet—too sweet.To L. H. B. (1894-1915)
Last night for the first time since you were deadI walked with you, my brother, in a dream.We were at home again beside the streamFringed with tall berry bushes, white and red."Don't touch them: they are poisonous," I said.But your hand hovered, and I saw a beamOf strange, bright laughter flying round your head,And as you stopped I saw the berries gleam."Don't you remember? We called them Dead Man's Bread!"I woke and heard the wind moan and the roarOf the dark water tumbling on the shore.Where—where is the path of my dream for my eager feet?By the remembered stream my brother standsWaiting for me with berries in his hands…"These are my body. Sister, take and eat."There is a Solemn Wind To-NightThere is a solemn wind to-nightThat sings of solemn rain;The trees that have been quiet so longFlutter and start again.The slender trees, the heavy trees,The fruit trees laden and proud,Lift up their branches to the windThat cries to them so loud.The little bushes and the plantsBow to the solemn sound,And every tiniest blade of grassShakes on the quiet ground.Out in the GardenOut in the garden,Out in the windy, swinging dark,Under the trees and over the flower-beds,Over the grass and under the hedge border,Someone is sweeping, sweeping,Some old gardener.Out in the windy, swinging dark,Someone is secretly putting in order,Someone is creeping, creeping.Fairy TaleNow folds the Tree of Day its perfect flowers,And every bloom becomes a bud again,Shut and sealed up against the golden showersOf bees that hover in the velvet hours….Now a strainWild and mournful blown from shadow towers,Echoed from shadow ships upon the foam,Proclaims the Queen of Night.From their bowersThe dark Princesses fluttering, wing their flightTo their old Mother, in her huge old home.Sorrowing LoveAnd again the flowers are comeAnd the light shakes,And no tiny voice is dumb,And a bud breaksOn the humble bush and the proud restless tree.Come with me!Look, this little flower is pink,And this one white.Here's a pearl cup for your drink,Here's for your delightA yellow one, sweet with honey,Here's fairy moneySilver brightScattered over the grassAs we pass.Here's moss. How the smell of it lingersOn my cold fingers!You shall have no moss. Here's a frailHyacinth, deathly pale.Not for you! Not for you!And the place where they grewYou must promise me not to discover,My sorrowful lover!Shall we never be happy again?Never again play?In vain—in vain!Come away!Katherine Mansfield.
ReleaseIt seemed that Time had died,And all the ghosts came wandering from the shades—From Heaven's blue hills and from the darkling gladesOf unborn years, from Hell's rose-tinted tombs….And by the poppied sideOf a slow stream that lies with limbs soft-curledIn the green darkness of an intangible worldFar beyond space, the living and the dead,The fruits of unborn wombs,All the bright souls of unknown, fathomless agesPast and yet to be, were suddenly boundInto a moment's compass, trapped and caught(Lovers and fools, voluptuaries and sages),And with them all the things that they had soughtOf loveliness and joy, were prisoned fast—Fair orchards, blossom-crowned,All singing and all sound,All love and laughter, touch and taste and scent,And all things men had found,Had gathered, stored and spentIn markets of the soul to buy delight;The ocean and her moon, the myriad stars,And the still-shining sun;All things, unknown and known, all were made oneIn one immortal moment, crowned with content,Timeless and immutable, wreathed with flowersOf brief, far-gathered hours, of mouldering centuries and unborn years….For Time, the old grey Robber-god, lay dead,With his unnumbered hostGathered about him, cold and quiet and still.Age was a tavern-jest, an olden dreadLong buried; change a half-remembered ghostHaunting a ruined town;Eternity the shadow of thistledownBlowing upon a windy, timeless hill.When She SpeaksLovelier are her wordsThan the exquisite notesThat speak the souls of flutes.The songs of birdsAt dusk, when the first-born starSwims in the willow tree,Are not more dear to meThan her words are.When she speaks, all sound beginsTo tremble and meltIn music rarer than the liltOf violins.Her voice is more delicateThan the croon of wind in the coppice;All the world's songs are poppiesUnder her feet.ReturnThere is grave beauty hereIn this orchard valleyWhere no storms sullyThe rich, purple gloom where the lilies are.And there is quietness hereNow, as of old,Where great trees foldTheir dark limbs round the coolness of the air.The pearls of the sky still gleamThrough the branches of the trees,And the little, wandering breezeThat ruffles the feathers of the grass is still the same.Yet there is lonelinessMore stark than I have knownAs I stray aloneThrough the dim grass….O blue-grey dusk, where have you hidden my lover?She who would steal softly to this placeUnbidden, in other days,And lie in my arms in the haven of the clover.Now there is left to me nothingBut frail lilies of evening, and her faceIs only a shadow in the gloom of this place,And a memory her bosom pressed against mine, soft-breathing.Old WomanThe years have stolenall her loveliness,her days are fallenin the long wet grasslike petals brokenfrom the lilac blossom,when the winds have shakenits tangled bosom.Her youth like a dimcathedral liesunder the seasof her life's long dream,yet she hears stillin her heart, sometimes,the far, sweet chimesof a sunken bell.NightfallNow evening shakes her wingsAnd the feathers of darknessFlutter upon the worldLike finished songs.And like music that is stillAfter soft playing,The dead sun's petals are lyingOn the seaward hill.Heaped in their rose-red riotOf dusky flames:Bright as the feverish dreamsOf an old mad poet.The sea has brimmed the bayTo the sand's edgeAlong the windless beach;The small craft lieOn her pearl breast asleepLike old ships' ghostsLong-drowned, with their ropes and mastsMirrored deep.All the world's in the water:See where it lies—Grey cliffs and trees and skiesSoftly a-glitter.With the new-born gleaming starsOf Heaven's meadowsLost in wet shadowsWith silver planet-flowers….Now from the darkened skyThe last light has drained:All the world is drownedIn the ancient sea.The RunnerI have heard soft lutessob their ecstasies,and the thrush's notestumble from the rain-wet trees.I have heard the ocean's songrise like a flamewith cold blue tonguefrom the swirling foam,And from the sky far whispers,not tunes, not words,the dim, mournful vespersof homing birds.Sea-chime, and fluting bird,and tune from smitten strings,all these are lovely, but I have heardmore lovely things:There are songs that beatand throb along the bloodwhen our flying feeton the greensward thud,And pipes that shrillas with labouring stepwe clamber up the hill,pause, and then dipDown through the sweetgrass-scented air,with flying feetand flying hairLovely are the birds and the sobbingof lutes, but braver faris the voiceless music throbbingin the runner's ear.A. R. D. Fairburn.
Shub-Ad, the QueenThrough the long nightof fifty hundred yearsShub-Adthe Queenhas lain with her slim handsfolded across her small Sumerian breasts….awhile kissed warmby Babylonian suns,now quiet and passionlessand wrapped aboutby the magnificent blue cloak of death.Beads of a restless beautyworked in waysa hundred tireless eyes had dimmed to findmake pattern o'er her now…and precious ringsfall in close fringe from every jewelled edge.On that far daythey chimed a molten notethat ran in flamealong the Assyrian hillsand fell to silencein the purple sea.Now pins of gold and lapis lazulihold them forever dumb…On the wide-lidded eyes of this smooth mask,brittle with centuriesand sheathed with dust,that king set kisses,that had power to closedays for a million such…Now lies this headbanded and coiled with goldand set about with wreathsof mulberry leavesso rarely workedwith gems of ancient worth,beaten and wrought and veined with filigree,as to be treasurein a city of stateand riches known to Abraham…and at the doorguarding her way to deathliein their impotent mightsix sentinels…while, side by side,secret and still as she,eleven maidens bear her company.O their deep eyes had drownedin those last tearsthat burned their cheeksand stung their silent lipsere the great darkhad closed about their youth.Not all Euphrates stream or Tigris tidewere half enoughto wash away the griefthat untried strengthand living lovelinessfound in that following of majesty.I Gathered All My TreasureI gathered all my treasure…nights and days…trees…bare hills in summer…flowers in the rain.sun-drench…green shadow…birds' songs … and their wayswhen the night lifts and it is day again.All the small things that dwell in the tall field grassesand have their miracle being under the sod…all the incredible life that wakes and passeswith the swift breathing of Spring…all these were God.So … for their wonder and their loveliness.'…I builtfar in my heart's last deep recessa secret shrine.These things … these things were mine.How should I know that one already camearmed with a still white peace and shod with flame…how should I know love … how should I know your name?To PanTo dance!To the pipes of you … dance!till the holiest earthbreak into flower … into brilliance … for joy in our mirth!To sing!till your music shall ringthrough the uttermost gladeand awaken an echo in Heaven of song that we made!To run!till our limbs are outdone…from the wisdom of yearswith our pulses a-flame and the blood ringing sweet in our ears!To laugh!till we shatter the stars!To laugh … and to diewith the Love and the Mirth and the Music of you for our cry!Song for BarbaraLittle singing motherwith the happy eyes…does the grass grow greenon the lawns of Paradise?Did your feet go blithelyin that holy hourwhen you searched the ways of Heavenfor the sweetest flower?Did the light flow softlyin a silver streamas you turned you homewarddown the slopes of dream?Little singing motherwith the happy eyes…does the grass grow greenon the lawns of Paradise?Dorothea at the PianoSometimes when we wait silently and longshe drifts into a little perfect songthat she has made herself … all wistful notesfrom small and perfect throats.There is a partthat is her innermost heart.And she says always that the music singsof all the small brave tempest-wearied wingsthat seek a trackless way over the seato some shore older than their memorythat weaken, and falter, and fail, and drop in the foamand never reach home.She says it is their courage and their fearand their unswerving faith. But all I hearis little children with pale quenchless eyesand faces purer than the first sunrisecalling … with the voice of Dorothea.LoyaltySome day we two shall stand againand seek…deeply and long…the thing we knew and valued less than pain.We shall not speak.But, sure and strong,we shall stand so…till slowly we shall seeeach in the other's eyesa dumb surprise…a hurt a misery.Terribly in that moment we shall knowthat the days gonot all unburdened.…We shall findno rare exquisite knowledge in the mindand in the brainonly a memory of pain.So … wise and stern…we shall look once and turneach to our separate ways … new ways apartfrom an old youth-time agony of heart.And Shall I Suffer Deepest WoeAnd shall I suffer deepest woebecause you came…because you go?Shall my heart know dark distressbecause of your great loveliness?Beauty loved…Beauty gone…is Beauty yet to ponder on.And thought of youcan only startjoy singing in my heart.Aged FourHe stands so still…so still…with quiet folded handsand eyes so big with half-forgotten things.Does he yet glimpse the shining hosts of Heavenand hear the Angels' wings?Motionless now he standsat the brink of Paradise…then turns to me where I wait … and his eyes are wise.How shall I tell him now of lovelinessand the frail heart's distress?How shall I speak of love…love that is pain…when Wisdom turns and looks at me again?ConvalescentI have been back to the no-places…to the grey viewless regions whence I came…out of the memory of hands and facesand warmth and the friendly flame.I have been back to the no-places … to the wan half-light…where is no black oblivion of nightnor hope of any dawn…beyond the memory of hands and faces…and your voices borneto me are the wordless winds that wander the waste spaces…desolate … forlorn…or the restless sorrowless sighing of waters far out at seain the grey hour when life goes heavily.I have been back … back to the drear no-placesbeyond my knowledge of you…beyond the fear of Life's or of Death's embraces…to the things I knew.Spring PassingAnd so … one morning delicate with Springwhen all the hills about her little townshone golden in the sun…and scent of gorse and broomflower drifted down….and sorrowingseemed very far away…one daywith the sweet breathof Summer all about … and Winter done…and all the seasilvered and strange and still…she … who had never known serenitybut only body's illand heart's distress…lifted her arms to a new lovelinessand looked upon the quiet face of Death.FrailtySweet, and sweeter, comes to meone small and fragile memory…Your cheek is smooth and soft…Often it comes, and more oft…Soft as a moth-wing in the night…soft and white…white and coolas waters in a dawnlit pool…and pale…and as this memory is … so sweetly frail.The Sun-worshipperBack!Back through the clean sweet airsto the clear-swinging stars!What has the Earth given ever beyond its yearsthat take…taketill the human heart break?Nothing enduresbeyond the desire.Back!Back to the Firethat kindled you … back to the Flame!Leap!Shake from your eyes the last garment of Sleep…Highthrough the no-coloured wonder of brilliance illumined, the Sky…till the gold of your hairburns, star-entangled … a sun … in the quivering air!Leapto the Sun!To the Sun whence you came…to the glorious Giver of Life…and be lost in its Flame!Red and WhiteTurn down the light…And all about the roomfaces like pale lost moonsshow through the gloom.We are at ease.And she sits motionless.And now she bendsto the white keys…till her whiter fingers freewith their soft, slow caresssome melodyall truth, and purity, and loveliness.She bends…and her white fingers leap in the shade.And her whitepure face is alightwith the song she has made.And her soulhovers a moment … white … over the whole.And the music ends.We are afraid.Turn up the light.She drops her head.And her hands lie motionless … deadof their own delight.Turn up the light.And sudden her cheeks burn redbecause of the things … the exquisite, secret things … her fingers have said.Alison Grant.
Molecular TheoryNoiseless, unnursed, the country roseIs born, and quietly it goes:The unheard bright anemoneBlooms for the eye alone to see.Never a sigh, never a groanUtters this unmarked casual stone,There breaks no breath from this dull woodTo hear, I know, nor ever should.Yet do I know that stone, wood, flowerTravail and sicken every hour—Deep, deep about the hidden coreA thousand systems meet at war.A thousand suns are brought to birthAnd shattered in the very earthBeneath my feet; without a soundPulses the long-tormented ground.And yet, I think, could I but hearOnce, suddenly, with quickened ear,Might I not start, as saw my eyeA petal fall, to catch a cry?To a Fairy
Discovered in the early morning dancing on a dewdrop
Dance, little one, dance!Poised delicatelyUpon your crystal-shimmering world:What whim or chanceMakes you to dance this young and sweet-breathing morn,Wings furled—Sporting there,Limbs lightly tossing in the lucent airIn happy scornOf all earth's bitter troubles, trouble born?We are sunk deep,Deep in despondencies, and even in sleepTroubled, we toss—Count o'er the petty gain, the mighty lossOf all we dearest hold, love hardliest.…You simple one,Look on the world and weep,See all the things men do—None,None, but maketh the restOf all God's creatures shunThem for their greater shame.But youHaving no name, nor fame,Nor trouble, nor sad thoughtWearily to think on, leap,Higher you leapInto the morning-sweet air, and fallBack to the shining globe of your dancing-stage.Ah! do you wageDesolate war in your land? Do you callDesolation peace?Answerless? Mute?…Well, do you dance,Having the better part—Dance to the fluteOf the wind, as it breathes without cease:Dance delicately tip-toed, dance—Toss each limbAirily, to the whimThat lightly takes your happy, happy heart…Then leap, clingTo a bee's wingFloat on his 'broidered back to a purple flower—Enter and singThe sweet-scented hour.…Now delicately, daintily,Dance!The ClimberStriving, breast to the wind, on the desolate hill,This, do I think, is the end and the summit of life—Ever to strive with the fateful implacable willOf the Invisible: strive, nor lose heart in the strife.Blow, wind of heaven! buffeting, cleansing and strong-Steep and more steep, O hill, do you rise in your might!Never the blast nor the steepness shall stagger me long,Turn me from quest of the uttermost, starriest height.Blow, wind, O blow! be your strength as the strength of a giantYet face I you; nor all your strength wielded and thrownAt my body shall batter it back: for ever defiantI make the ascent, till I stand on the summit alone.DespondencyAh! would to God that I were lyingAlone in some lonely place,With only the wind blowing and the clouds flying,And the rain in my face.Ah! would to God that I should neverHear sound of voice again,But only the wind in clashing tree-tops ever,Ever the plashing rain.And the noise of distant sea-waves slowly breakingOn passive shore—These only hear, these feel, and while earth's makingHear, feel no more.The CathedralThen suddenly we came into a gloom…I think the jubilant stars in heaven sangIndeed when those strong lovely columns sprangUp and forever up and made a roomInfinity; I think the flaming choirFolded their wings and trembled with the senseOf men who borrowed God's omnipotenceOf beauty and made seen their great desire.For here arch rose on arch, arched over allThe roof that lifted up the troubled heartOf centuries; here light and darkness grownDivine shed mystery from wall to wall—Aisle lost in aisle were passion-moulded artOf men no more; here stood the Word made stone.British MuseumThese laughing and chattering children among the old dead!Smirched faces and grubby knees sidle and mock, this dull day,At the still marble emperors, those who threw world upon world.Or sunk in a grave quietude, they go hand in handAmong the portentous great gods of the sources of time,The casual river which washed them up here and passed on.The gods brood abandoned and Hadrian's empire is shrunkTo a pedestal carved with his name; but the children go yetLike sunlight and dawn in the midst of the ages of man.In the CotswoldsYes, it is beautiful, this old, old land:These houses root their being in the earth,These walls, these stones, share in a larger birthWith strong-set trees and painted blades that standAbout the slopes, the russet furrows, andJoin in the deep impulse that through the girthOf hill and valley's limit, moulds its worth—So meet for love, to hold within the hand!I tread these roads, and know once more the raceOf blood, the tissue's balance with the bones;A wind strikes—and my opened eyes are blindWith gazing on an unseen distant place;My deaf ears hear Orongo-rongo's stones—Bloom bursts on wind-swept hills within my mind.J. C. Beaglehole.
In the Manner of Li PoI have seenThe naked, knotted limbs of trees inked in againstthe sky,And suddenly they held the wholeUnquiet restless soulOf sunset. Between the thin black lips of twigscolour ran like fire.And two still boughs held all the sky, held all thesunset.And I have seenWithin the slow pools of your eyes the goblin moon,the gleaming moon,Softly swinging on those shadowy mirroring waters.And I know that as one tree can hold the sunset,And your eyes the quietness of the moon,So can my one heartHold the miracles of the universe.From a TrainSuddenly, after wastes of wildGrey and sullen brown,We came upon a quiet fieldWhere the sheep lay down.Snow-white sheep on a wet, dark field,With a still tree beyond,And the fat bodies of four ducksRuffling a golden pond.All suddenly, out of the hushedThick darkness of night,A carillon of bells we heardIn a gleaming flight,Shaking their rhythm down the skyIn a bright cloud of sound,Like the soft beat of breasting dovesOver the muffled ground.And suddenly all else was goneSave Beauty aching on and on.The MotherHe dragged beside her in the crowdWith hanging mouth and idiot eyes,Dead to the wind's soft clouded goldAnd the birds pointing down the skies.Dowdy and stooped, with work-worn hands,She held him gently, close the while:Unknown, unnoticed, though there stoodA very Christ within her smile.MirageDarkness eddying, swirling round,And in that profound,Soft surging tide even the light of my match drowned.Only the silence thick with sound,And darkness eddying, swirling round.Suddenly, dancingly, your voice came,A secret, lovely flame.There was no night: for the night was silver with your name…As in old days, the same,Suddenly, dancingly, your voice came…Came and was gone, and the thick tides of darkness beat me back,And your voice was the voice of the wind, and my heart was black.TreesTrees, they're funny things—They hurt somehow;I've seen the whole sky caughtIn one black bough.Pines I've loved best.You hear the sea,All swelling soft and hoarseIn just one tree.They stand all black and tall,With stars betweenTheir strong dark boughs some nights.I know, I've seen.I've watched trees drag and droop;Seems they weren't meantFor towns—all crying 'gainstThe sky, and bent.That hurt a bit, but pines—They stir me deep,That soft, lost roar of theirs;They never sleep.They hurt somehow, do trees.I've loved them all,But pines, they twist my heartWith their wild call.Any LoverHe talked, the learned man, for hours,Of this growth-travailled world of ours,Of whirling earths in darkness flung—The cataclysmic bells Time's rung.Most glibly, on his certain tongue,Dim centuries like beads he strung,And as he talked he carefullyDissected every mystery.Until at last he'd pigeonholedEach blinding phrase that earth has told,Most neatly cataloguing eachIn dry, staccato human speech.And then he made complacent pauseAmidst preoccupied applause.…I turned my head, and like a bookI held the ages in a look.Una Currie.
AdventureThe world is charted out from Pole to Pole,Measured and docketed and filed away;And old Adventure, portly grown and grey,Sits in his office. But his fiery soulYearns for the magic seas that used to roll,The dragon terrors that were once to slay,The perilous journeys past the rim of dayIn joyous quest of some forbidden goal.Yet there remains to him one land untrod,One venture beckoning still, one keen surmiseTo fan the wanderlust and fire his eyes,To spur his pulses and to rouse his breath,One vision still to stir his rover-blood:The panorama from the peaks of Death.SpaceWithin this pulsing artery called space,Filled with the living liquid of the sky,A million million stars go flaring by,Whirled in some seeming-sempiternal chase.And on one star we stand, an insect race,And gaze across the voids, and vainly tryTo solve the secret of the sun, or pryBeyond the boundaries of time and place.So, the living liquid of our blood,The microbes on some atom-asteroidMay live, unconscious of the swirling flood,And wonder at the sun that lights their day,Across an unimaginable void,A million-millionth of an inch away.GloryHe dreamed of glory through his boyhood years:Thousands of lancers in the morning lightCharging behind him with tumultuous might—A thundering cataract of cavaliers.He dreamed of glory. Silver swords and spears;Banners of gold and purple, and the brightMeadows of waving hats to left and right;His tall plumes tossing in a gale of cheers.He dreamed of glory; but he dreams no more.Glory has made him her ambassador,And there, erect among the rotten-ripeCorpses that snuggle in their beds of blood,He stands unconquerable, knee-deep in mud,And fumbles for a match to light his pipe.RosesThe ladies walk the garden pair and pair,Loiter and nod to this and that great rose,And softly say how beauteously it grows,And move away, content and unawareWhat deeds of death awoke those blossoms there;What lives are squandered where the gardener goes;What insect-towns he sacks and overthrows,Caring for naught if that his flowers be fair.So War goes gardening; and men are torn,And towns are sacked and nations overthrown;While pair and pair, in parks of paradise,The goddesses go sauntering through the morn,And praise the roses that old War has grown:Roses of courage and self-sacrifice.Bartlett Adamson.
AkaroaAt dusk in Akaroa townWhen embered sunset smoulders downAnd softly wreathes the evening mistIn whorls of tender amethyst,The air is charmed with old-world spellOf chanting bird and chiming bell;And garden plots are redolentOf poignant, unforgotten scent,Where gillyflower and fleur de lysBloom underneath the cabbage tree,And crimson rata strives to chokeWith amorous arms the hoary oak,And jonquil mocks the kowhai's gold—Ah, sweet it is … so young, so old!So young, so old! So old, so new!I wonder, at the fall of dew,When from the evening's grey cocoonComes glimmering forth the moth-like moon,And winds, upon the brooding treesStrum soft, nocturnal symphonies,If kindly ghosts move up and downIn tranquil Akaroa town;If voyageurs from storied FranceWalk still the streets of old romance,If laughing lads and girls come yetTo dance a happy minuet,If grandpere muses still uponThe fortunes of Napoleon,And grandmere, by the walnut tree,Sits dreaming with her rosary?And when, across the arch of nightThe moon wings forth in radiant flight,Do ghostly whalers sail the bayAnd ghostly crews make holiday,With ribald mirth, to drink or sup,Or set a phantom try-pot up?Do shades of natives ever comeTo barter pigs for nails and rum,And dusky nymphs disport them stillAbout the bows of Gauge or Nil?If so, 'tis sure they fade awayWhen rose and silver comes the day,For never a phantom steals there downTo sunlit Akaroa town;Yet chanting bird and chiming bellWeave yet the charm, the old-world spell,And still in gardens there are setThe gillyflower, the mignonette,The rata, on the oak-tree hung—Ah, sweet it is … so old, so young!The jonquil, mocking kowhai's gold—So blithe, so new! So triste, so old!The Coal-HulksFlow in, O tide, O tide of wistful eve!(The thin blue dusk across the sungold steals)Grieve, grieve,O little wind, and softly sighAlong the line of sea and skyTo where the blackened coal-hulks lieWith rotting beams and rusted keels.Along the line of sea and sky,In silhouette, inanimate,The melancholy coal-hulks lie,Most dolorous and desolate.Adventurers of a valiant age,Whose shining sails swept eager seas,They have a last sad anchorageBeyond the clamorous harbour quays.Throughout the days their winches groan,The derricks work with creak and scream;But in the kindly dusk, alone,They ride a rosy flood of dream.Their prows of vision halcyon,Their timbers thrilled to memoryOf proudly setting out uponOld voyages of dignity.Old journeys whose remembered questWakes yet again the old-time fireTo glimpse known beacons, east and west,And sail the seas of their desire.And each, a quickened argosyFor whom some Eldorado gleams,Would sight again some radiant sea,The ultimate ocean of its dreams.And in the dusk they feel again,In mournful majesty of pride,About their shrouds the deep-sea rain,Beneath their keels the ocean tide.Old ships, old dreams. The sea winds sigh,The young ships come, the young ships go;The sombre hulks at anchor lieThrough ceaseless tides that ebb and flow.Flow out, O tide, O darkling tide of night!Lap them about with kisses as you goSlow, slow;O pitying stars, rain tears of tender light.And peaceful moon, in benediction glow,And gently flow, O tide compassionate,Along the line of sea and sky,Where, dolorous and desolate,The melancholy coal-hulks lie.Mona Tracy.
A Leaf from a Fly-bookThe King's road is a troublous summons calling day and day;But my feet take the cocksfoot track, the easy, vagrant way;Beside the restless acres and the gold of noisy gorseThe ripple lures its lover down the dazzle of its course.Its speech is of the yellow reaches, rich with lurking joy;The revel of the rapids, where gay life is death's decoy;My heart is with the laughing lips; I follow up and down,But follow not the King's white road toward the haste of town.Afoot, the wash of waders, and aloft, the haze-veiled blue,—The heart it needeth nothing, so the cast fall clean and true.O carol of the running reel, O flash of mottled back!And who would take the King's white road and who the cocksfoot track?The hour-glass fills with weather like a wine of slow content;I throw the world behind me as a cartridge that is spent.Then home by summer starlight bear my grass-cool, mottled load;I quit the pleasant cocksfoot track; I take the King's white road.A Northern SongHo! launch the longship down the beach,—The loosened bergs lift out to sea;The tide-rip swings adown the reach;The fettered waterways are free,March pipes athwart the swinging firs,And rides white horses into foam;The rover in the red blood stirs,The water laps our hearts from home.The rover in the red blood stirs,The narrow seas shout to their own,Their call is tenfold more than hersThat bideth by the ingle-stone;The stars bathe in the sea by night,The long coasts fleck our sail by day,Storehouse and barn are ours by right,—We harry in the Viking way!The winter, like the Polar bear,Stalks down the whitened north again;There's frost within the Channel air,And hearts for pine-log fires are fain.There is a bench beside a hearth,There is a girl with yellow hair—My soul is sick for roof and garth,Up where the Northern Streamers flare!The Quest of the SancgrealWho seeks the Holy Grail he rides aloof.The lure of lips and eyes and rippled hairAnd clinging arms,—all love's white, silken snareHe shall thrust from him for his soul's behoof;And when Night cowers upon Comfort's roof,The leaping fire and circling wine forswear,And follow where Adventure's clarions blareAnd spirit frets its fleshly warp and woof.The salt of life shall mock with appetiteHis lips denied the savour and the spiceWherein the sons of men do take delight;He shall enthrone his soul beyond their priceAnd follow the cold twilight of the trail,And in the end he shall not win the Grail.Seaforth Mackenzie.
ExileThe night is a great jewel shot with fires,Milky with moonlight, murmurous with seasWhich find an echo in the pine-tree spires,The lights stir like white flowers beneath the trees,And through the leaves the little winds go thronging,But my heart takes wings of longing, wings of longing.For it is Spring at Home,
"Home": England.
Of hyacinthine hills, pale skies,And dim, green beechwoods blownBy winds a-glitter with the rain,Tremble of leafing aspens thrownOn silver meres,And the long whisper of the weirsFlashing to foam.Ever before me seemsA far, forlornly lovely land,Threaded with shining streams;I hear larks singing in the rain,I see dusks filled with jewelled gleamsAmong dark trees,I dream of woodland ways, green leas,Thrush-haunted dreams.And so, my heart swift-winged with longing fleesOver the night's rim, brooding, dim, star sown,To where, beyond a waste of chanting seas,It's Spring at Home.I LoveI love the tumult of the trees,The silvern slant of willow leaves,The song that falling water sings,These and a thousand thousand thingsI love.The shadowy tideways of the moon,The drowsy gold of afternoon,Blue uplands where cloud shadows flee,Pines calling, sea-like, to the sea,The clear, pale evening star alightFar down the windy gulf of night,Cloud-purpled seas of changing hue,And bright web-threaded drops of dew,The twilight song a late thrush sings,Sun on a soaring seagull's wings,These and a thousand thousand thingsI love.The PoolCupped in a little valley whereThe blowing leavesWeave shadow tapestriesAmong the trees,Pale, gleaming like a gem cast downBy some dim spirit of the mist,Clear, still and cool,There lies a pool.All day it dreams aloneHaunted by music of the thrushes blownFar down the distances.But still I knowWhen night is trembling on the brinkOf dawn, the shy swift winds steal hereTo drink.Through the white mists I hearTheir footsteps go,A breath among the leaves which dies and stills,Fading to silence in the lonely hills.NightNight holds the earth in jewelled hands,A shadowy bowl with a broken rim,Brimming with waters of moonlight dim.The liquid dusk of the sky is sownWith paling stars far scattered and strown,Like moonstones slipped from a parted string.And the clouds, pale foam of the winds, are blownTo a misty spindrift, a ghostly foam.The vast, dim cavern of night is filledWith a dreamy sounding, a murmurous spellAs of far-off seas in a great sea-shell.Light and shadow are all aswim,The world is flooded from brim to brimWith laving waters of moonlight dim.SpringThe willows standGreen-misted by the dreaming pool,There is pale foam of blossom on the hill,Alternate tides of gold and shadow spillAcross the land.The larks have flownFar cloudwards up the plashing wind,From over sun-swept hill and dappled plainTheir song comes tinkling down, a silver rainTo spindrift blown.The upland treesToss green and gold upon the height,Through the dim gossamer of drifting showers.The rain-jewels lie upon the flowers,And on the leaves.The earth awakes,All its pent loveliness bursts forthIn leafing bough and fragile bud unfurled.Spring, Summer's wistful dawn, upon the worldIn beauty breaks.Doreen Price.
Half-MoonThe little pools of starlight splashAgainst the poplars' slender lines;The moon is like a golden combCaught in the tresses of the pines.Go quietly, lest unaware,You find the leafless path that leadsTo where an older god than GodMakes cruel music through the reeds.The lilies float like slender handsTowards a satyr-trampled brink,With crowns of oakleaves in their hairThe shouting fauns come down to drink.Not Innocency's self shall walkThese breathless ways and shall not seeThe wine-stained lips and dangerous eyes,The swart-faced folk of Arcady.And lovers who have wandered throughThe clover-purple evening's peace,Have glimpsed, deep-breasted, insolent,The mocking loveliness of Greece,Have heard the lawless bugles singFrom that defiant Paradise,And seen, like moonlight through the trees,The glory of unearthly eyes.And never shall the watcher seekHis tender human loves again,For marble-white, with singing lips,The wood-nymphs glimmer through his brain.Go quietly. The tall gods hereWould wear your beauty like a flowerTo crush with jests and cast asideIn one unpitying, splendid hour.Road's EndYou have made summer golden. Now you go.Let us have nothing but the courteous wordsChosen by men to suit the unstirred heartWhen roadways that were friendly fall apart;Let neither tell he knew that in these slowSweet dawns was chiming of enchanted birds.For words are broken wings.… Let it sufficeThat in some twilight all the green and goldOf pausing summer suddenly shall holdColour of you. The little horn of rainThrough dripping leaves shall sound your name again,And all the pools where opal sunsets shine,Having more faithful memory than mine,Shall give me back the laughter of your eyes.DivisionIf it were nothing but some deep abyssOpened between us—if some icy seaWhose sword of waters clove 'twixt kiss and kissHid your small garden's dreaming face from me,I should have faith: and parting would have end—I think our feet would cross on rainbows, friend.For Love knows patient ways of building strongBridges and stairs, Love flies with secret wings,Love's shining wind shakes cities with a song,Swirls wet, pink blossoms round bewildered kings.But there is more to conquer—all that longPageant of ghosts, in stained and tattered dress—The swift, mistaken word; the unmeant wrong;The pride, grown harsh at last for loneliness.The TreesI saw the little leaves that haveSo gay a dance, their tiny veinsSkilfully painted by some graveFine hand that spared not love nor pains.And here a mystery was wroughtIn secret letters hard to find—Each leaf was perfect, each a thoughtMade shapely in the dreamer's mind.In caverns deep beneath the earthThe blind roots twist. They do not knowHow their boughs rock with April's mirth,Nor feel the ripening Autumn's glow.And the swift tides of sap that passFrom gloom to sunshine have no wordsTo tell the lovely scent of grass,The plash of rain, the call of birds.But still the blind, brown fingers gropeAnd wrench asunder rocky bars,For no reward but some dim hopeAnd far-off knowledge of the stars.Oh life, in caverns dark as theseWe build and break. In depths profoundAs any plumbed by ancient treesWe wander blindly underground,And blindly from strange soil we drinkThe very milk of Mother Earth,The secret rivers by whose brinkNor daffodil nor scent has birth.Nor may we know how swiftly theseDark tides shall gift our boughs with wings,Shall blossom into melodiesAnd starry-plumed, immortal things.But where the tree of Man grows tallAnd soars to straightness from its clodWiden the flowers that shall not fall,Whereof the perfume pleases God.Paris in TroySuddenly, as the Cyprian spake and smiled,I had a vision of a golden roomWhere sate no splendour, but a fated childWhose eyes were steady from the eyes of Doom.For all her shadows, innocency's grace,And youth were like white flowers in her hand;Her hair was bright like banners seeking war,And yet it framed so delicate a face,And through the dim blue tapestries I sawMenelaus, like a sworded shadow, stand.So now the many standards are unfurled,The deaths of Kings I had not recked are told,And lowered flags stream past that I may knowWhat star-topped trees that blind, sweet hour laid low.What does it matter? Here in Troy I holdOne flower's frailty from a hurricane world.GalleonsYours was no store of gleaming silks,Of yellow birds and Indian spice—Your ships were loaded with a freightOf purely English merchandise.Such quiet English hopes and dreamsAs slowly widen into flowerWhen faint and mellow sunshine strikesAgainst the tall cathedral tower.And English hopes that blossom whenSpring runs barefoot through Arden. AllEngland's sweet brooks of laughter, andHer silences where blackbirds call.So that when tropic nights have seenYour small and steadfast pennants passTheir silken winds have suddenly knownThe little scent of English grass.Such cargo yours as set the worldTo whispering Devon fairy tales,And loosened in the phoenix woodsThe songs of English nightingales.GhostsWe two are ghosts. Lightly we walk togetherThrough wistful twilight, through young silver rain—There was an ominous dream that swooped: againIts black wings beat, its cold voice echoed "Never."Its foul lips cried, "My hand has broken upThe pattern of your rainbow—all the brightTranslucent colours, all the misty lightLike bubbles prisoned in an opal cup"Spilled on grey soil, that grows not even flowers."Now the slim bluegums strain against the wind,A dark hill climbs before us, and behindNight builds her azure town, her dreaming towers.So well we know the secret way. And ghostsCome home to earth are free of weariness—Say, did the little unseen grasses pressYour feet so kindly, on those starry coasts?But let this hour be earth's. Ah, let the scentOf cold young crescent leaves creep through my hair,Lie still at last; feel faintly beating nearHeart of the friendly world. Be well contentWith this beloved touch of grass and dew.…What unfamiliar music holds the night?See the stars trail like shining birds their brightPinions of flame, on the same sky we knew.If there be change it lies with us. And >yet
As of old years, held close to you, the glowOf joy like dawning takes me. Scarce I knowWhy words are broken, eyes and faces wet.Look not too deep in purple sky or sea—For where the waves creep outward with the tideThere waits a mist and strangeness; all the wideOcean of space to sever you and me.PerditaGod send to-morrow a day of mist,Grey clouds slim and still as a crane,Darkening shadow of amethyst,And the little, quiet rain.Send the smooth winds flying like dovesFrom hollows under the hillside-breast,Loose on high the light that she loves,Ragged silver along the west.Call the blue winds home from the deep,Home from the harbour of little ships;They will bring dreams to the heart asleep,And a quiver back to her lips.Here on the hills her white youth dwells,Here by the gorse her soul keeps tryst,Speaks with a voice of floating bellsFaint and far through the mist.Seal the words she shall give you, Lord,Safe in Thy casket of spacious skies,Staunch with dews the wound of the sword,Heal with a star her eyes.Let Thine earth forgive her at lengthThat she forgot—that she grew old—And the tall hill offer her all its strength,And the wet gorse all its gold.RainRain-murmurings. The wind whines and snuffles, wetAs a poor dog whose lord has ceased to careFor faithful things like dogs; and you, Pierrette,With little firelit face and firegold hair,Curled like a kitten in an easy-chair,Who purrs for stroking … velvet-soft … and yet,Who knows, behind your yellow eyes, what brainMay serve you? Hush—the little whine of rain.Rose-red azaleas around you bend,Soft from your lamp the rose-red shadows fall—See, golden eyes, how rose and golden blendAs panther firelight leaps along the wall.Outside the small wind shakes a dripping coat,Stifling a little whimper in its throat.Robin Hyde.
VisionWhen the vision is upon meI, that have known only these green hills,And the wet bush tracks, and the lonely country roads…See, in the spare grey light of another day,Waves of a sea that is only a name to me,Fretting against a cliff where it never stills,Brittle, and green, and cold.A stony wayI see, and a woman there with a red mouth fairAnd a chain of gold about her slender neck(I have only known gold on a kowhai flower).Quiet she is and still by the clashing sea,Her red-gold hair is heavy about her there(My hair is black and close-cropped short and high),And in some strange way, she that is there is I!When the vision is upon me,Shaking, I see the splendour in the eyesOf the woman that is I, and cry aloud,"Cha till!"
"Cha till": gaelic, "I return."
I cry, "Cha till!" in unknown tongue,I, who have known only red day's riseUpon this fresh young land, seen sun and cloudWithin one little sky, cry out, "Cha till!"When the vision is upon me.LossYou have lost the dear delight of little things—Sweet sounds that do not reach to your dimmed ears,A red leaf on the concrete path that singsA little rustle as the winter nears.You still delight in watching from the room,Lamp-lit, the slender spears of summer rain,But your fine face holds just a little gloomTo think you'll never hear their sound again.And if Love walks beside you silently,And murmurs through your hair that you are dear(Sweet words that must be spoken quietly),You do not heed him, for you cannot hear!LightThe oil-lamp on the table by my bed,In this my quiet room,Makes a small circle, warm and softly red,Within the pressing gloomThat floods this lonely house, waits in the night,Outside the glowing circle of my light.And when I must put out this flame at last(This steadfast flame), I lieOn pillows where the shaded light is cast,And watch it slowly die,Fading and sinking to a tiny spark,One leaping gleam—and then the engulfing dark."So!" says a thought, "And that is how you'll die!And you'll be lonely, too,When in the dark, the folding dark, you lie."Ah, that isn't true!Now that this little lamp is out, I seeThe radiance of the skies spilt in on me.AutumnO, Earth beloved, the laughing waters lean,Russet and burnished gold, to kiss your lips,While from the hedge, where scarlet berries glow,A dragon-fly, on golden meshed wings, slips,O, Earth, the autumn dreams in robes of fire,And shining splendour of a frosted morn,Red berries flaunt where once the rose was gay—O, Earth beloved, the year has passed so soon.O, Earth beloved, the years are placid grey,But Memory, with silvered fingers, swingsBack her dark curtain, and the thoughts of youthSpeed, like the dragon-fly,… on golden wings.O, Earth, and I have loved, have loved you so—Red berries, birds, the bronze and blue lagoon—And I must leave you when the winter comes—O, Earth beloved, the years have gone too soon!PainThere was a hidden birdBefore the dawnCrying his pain towards the waking sky(Why should a bird know pain?) in tumbling notes,Crying … and singing … and a clean wind highSwept all the clouds afar, and left the day,And the bird flew up a shining, spearlike way,Singing.There was a hidden songEre I was born,Woven of pain against a waiting heart(Why should a girl bear pain?), a leaping song,Pulsing … and singing … till the notes grew strong,And swept, triumphant, all the pain away…And now I lift my hands towards the day, Singing.QuestMan that is born of Woman lifts his eyesTo the unmeasured skies,And seeks for Beauty in a strange place;Not the remembered line of limb or face,That swiftly dies;But Beauty, yet ungrasped, beyond the sun,In which to merge his soul, when life is done.Man that is born of Woman lifts his handsFrom the unnumbered sandsWhich are his world, and asks for something moreThan shining streams and slim trees at his door,Than pastured lands…Searching for Beauty where it never dies,Lonely and still, beyond the endless skies.Man that is born of Woman lifts his faceFrom the remembered placeWhere the unknown calls with mystic lureTo leave behind the things grown old and sureFor the strange graceOf Beauty that is out beyond the kenAnd the small, dark thinking of a world of men.Man that is born of Woman bows his headWith the uncounted dead,And if he finds his vision, no one knows,Or if the dream ends with the daylight's close,The yearning fled.…Man, seeking Beauty, asks for more than bread—How shall we know if this strange need is fed?Ishbel Veitch
La VieillesseI shall grow old and older,And wise as wise can be,And young men and maidensWill love to sit with me.I shall walk very gravelyWith slow feet on the grass,And young children playingWill hush to let me pass.I shall sit looking outwardOver a wide seaAnd birds will flock about meAnd make small talk with me.And these will be for jewelsFrom far tropic lands,Two eyes of topazAnd two ivory hands.Time will go stepping softly,In cool amber days,And I shall step beside himDown undiscovered ways.And I shall step beside him,Not faint or overbold,But bravely, very bravely,When I am wise and old.Earth Hold HimEarth hold him; he was so wise,The light in his eyesWas passionless, placid and deep;Oh, soft be his sleep.Earth hold him: graves are so dim,Be tender to him.Enfold him, and wrap him and makeHim warm for my sake,Who basked in the light of his eyes.Some day he will riseAnd step with winged feet to the wind,And you, left behind,Will burgeon with samite and gold,Springing soft from the mould,Because, for a light, loving whim,You were tender to him.Grey DaysI love these soft, still, pearl and opal days.The sun, like a shy lover, hides his face,Yet all his ardour filters through the hazeLike glow-worm light in a grey shadowy place.The trees stand breathless. No exulting windGoes singing through them loosening from their holdThe spent, sad leaves that autumn-long have pinedTo dance a dervish-dance in showers of gold.There are so many days that fill my heart,Bronze days and blue days and the days of Spring;But a soft grey day is a thing apart,The filmy bloom upon a linnet's wing.There may be in the calendars of HeavenOne pearl and opal day in every seven.RequitalSome day the silvery Spring-tideWill come on silvery feet,In through the little gatewayThat opens to the street,Will come with slender fingersA-tapping at my door,And I, who loved the Spring-tide,Will answer her no more.I shall not see the gloryThat shines upon her face,I shall be straitly lyingIn some green, quiet place.But I shall feel her footstepsLight on my sleeping head,And there will come a stirringAmong the sleeping dead.Soft as the breath of rosesUpon the scented air—Then will they sleep more sweetly,Knowing the Spring is there.And I shall rest serenely,Through heat and winter rains,Knowing my blood runs redlyLike wine, in other veins;Hearing, like faintest musicFrom far, slow-swinging spheresVoices of children's laughterGo singing down the years.HeavenThey say the streets of HeavenAre paved with beaten gold,And the white walls of HeavenAre marble-white and cold.They say the harps of HeavenMake tenderest melodyThat lifts and falls, unresting,Like waves upon the sea.But I shall know no HeavenWithout a blue-domed sky,And the bronzed feet of AutumnGallantly going by,And I shall know no HeavenExcept it bring to meThe high, tumultuous flutingOf birds in a windy tree.Helena Henderson.
RealityThis wide arc of earth and sea,Wrinkled hills' immensity,Lambent greens and flowing golds,Valleys which the river moulds;All this stir of light and shadeIs by mine own being made;Patterned leaf and fretting boughWith the birds in tumult now,And the stealth of sunset windHave no being save in my mind.Forest ripples, start and sway,Wheeling of the brisk, blue day,And the gloomed, tremendous nightLit by moons of borrowed light,All are just a faery moodOf the man-created wood.This tall fir, so straight and young,From a casual seedling sprung,Armoured against thrust and blow,Clutching frost and beating snow,Moored in windy tides that swingIn the swelling days of Spring,Takes its form and shape and scentFrom my busy brain's assent.I need but to turn my head,Shut mine eyes, and it is dead—Faded all its coloured pride,Vanished bough and leaf beside,Foothold where the tui sings,Home of thousand creeping things.And the wind that tunnels throughWhistling crack and roaring flue,Stop mine ears and what are you?But a ragged, waving tree,But a cloud's flight over me,But a straining, blind and brute,At my body by the root.In that lucid void there glowColours I shall never know,For mine eye's receptive skinHas no way to let them in.Every chord musicians makeWhen the rich vibrations wakeBeats my ears' responsive zonesMeshed in its soft overtones,And the sound of any wordIs by tumbling accents blurred.This smooth-shaped mahoganyTo a stronger-seeing eyeIs with giant fissures rift,On its shining surface liftMarching mountains by whose crestsAtom eagles have their nests,Yet the board beneath my handIs caressing, silken, bland.Seeking truth I grope, I pry,Lift my anxious, unquiet eye,Search forgotten wisdom out,Calculate, and put to routCalculation's judgments whenThey return to me again.Which the real, the seeming things?Dark distrust its curtain flingsOn the portal of my mind,And I halt, benumbed and blind.I cannot scale, I cannot fleeThis wall that bars reality.Sonnet for ElizabethBeauty has come to us from other daysStoried and strange, in triumph and in tears,Cloaked in sweet quietness, clad in glory's blaze,Adown the viewless path of travelled years.Old lovers gazed upon it, felt love's sunBurn into brightness, saw the white steel fallAnd unremembering slept, their bodies oneWith mould and must, their names a clarion call.Now is your own dear beauty to the worldA voice uplifted and a trumpet blown,A silken splendour never idly furledOr listless in life's airs, a tome of truthFor the faint earth. Oh, wondrous to have knownBeauty in you and you in beauty's youth.RetrospectAnd thus, my dear, and thus we loved,Hugged our contentment, languored, movedIn a lamped mist, felt pulses ring,Stammered, touched hands, knew kisses' stingAnd the whole flame of nearness. We,Wrapped in our glowing certainty,Knew no pretence. Eye smiled to eveFrom a complete, unclouded skyOf being. Strife and mind's distressCould never near us; they were lessThan unmarked fading of a starFrom heaven's lighted harbour. FarFrom the long littleness of dayWe walked a calm, resplendent way,Alert, responsive, each to eachWithout the stumbling sounds of speech.Our level minds, apt parallels,Reached out together. Never dwellsA look on a loved lover's face,Moving with fond, and transient grace,But we looked so; never a thoughtOf tenderness in tribute brought,But we have paid it—there was caughtFrom some remote and slumbering sea,In our minds' mesh, serenity.Measured when others were beside,We were a warm, suffusing prideIn one another, and our glanceShattered the wall of circumstance.Now in this book I read and findAll that those months have left behind,A tiny, tragic, mummied flower,Corpse of dead Springtime, hour by hourTombed in an old and mumbling bookIn which but patient scholars look—The violet which you leant to pullThat day, blue-gowned and beautiful,We curled beside the river's brink;I watched the slim and spreading chinkUntil it suddenly shut and thenThe pages' straightness stood again.You are a mood of quietness,Leisured remembrance, something less;A dry, dead flower, a faded flame—And what, I wonder, was your name?Quentin Pope.
The Sea Hath TakenLast night we laughed beside the sea;Now the sea has taken him;Taken him and keepin' himDown among the terrors.The sea that's always hunted him,Moon by moon been stalkin' him;Now the hunter's taken himIn a mesh of shadows.Last night he lay against my breast,All his thought was loving me;So the sea is mocking me,Mocking me and callin'.Slow, cold tides pass over him—Oh, the sea is clever!Even the green slanting lightCannot reach him ever;Even my poor loving wordsGo stumbling to him never.Day to day and night to night,Knowing no to-morrow,He is sleeping sound, no doubt,And I'm broke with sorrow.God Rest MichaelGod rest Michael,Who reached out to the stars,And set his passionate eyes to peaks of dreamBeyond our sight,And never knew the ecstasies of life;Cool fingers of the wind upon his face,Pearled waters placid in a summer's dawn,The flight of seagulls and a birch's grace.Comfort him,Whom stars left comfortless.For oh, his feet walked all too restlessly;God quiet Michael.LamentThere is no starshine in the misty skies,Nor any light upon the quiet sea;Nor any light upon an ashen world,Since love, with folded wings o'er his sad eyes,Deserted me.No rustling, tender-fingered noon breeze blowing,But homeless night winds through the pine trees sighingNor any sunny garden spaces glowing,Nor little, happy singing birds athrill,But sea-gulls, crying,The ReturnHe came back under darkling skies;He took my heart with his two eyes.He took my heart with his sweet eyes,Once gay, and now so deeply wise.I would be crying him for wordsThat seek my heart as homing birds;Searching in that dream darkness dimThe lips and loving arms of him.But he has dreams I may not shareSince he passed down the sea's green stair;And I go grieving love is fled,Now he walks bravely with the dead;So he is come to comfort me,That I may sleep all quietly.The face of him is gone, is gone,That I would die for looking on.Helen Glen Turner
The BeggarCurse the beggar in the streetThat he has less joy than I,As, at these fine old trees' feet,Body-satisfied, I lie.He it is whose threne sobs thinAll adown this lovely dale;Till slight pleasure grows rank sin'Gainst Pan's pipes his pipes prevail.He it is, with loathsome mien,Gibbers by the sweeping car,As, for joy, we steal betweenFields where frail pools sleeping are.He hath damned my fine-bound bookAnd my pleasantness of meat—Blasted, by his withering look,All that once I glad could greet.Curse the beggar in the streetCurse the beggar that he die:Curse him for his shrivelled feetAnd his cruel, sight-striving eye.After DeathAnd there will be just as rich fruits to cull,And jewels to see;Nor shall the moon nor the sun be any more dull;And there shall be flowers as fine to pull,And the rain will be as beautiful—But not for me.And there shall be no splendour gone from the vine,Nor from the tree;And still in the heavens shall glow Jah's radiant sign,And the dancing sun on horses' sleek hides shall seem no less fine;Still shall the car sweep along with as lovely a line—But not for me.And men shall cut no less curious things upon brass,Still sweep the sea;Nor no little, lustrous shadow upon the sand's massCast by the lilting ripple above shall cease to pass,And radiance shall still enhalo shadows on moonlit grass—But not for me.R. A. K. Mason.
Blue MagicTemple of Twilight on a lonely hilltop,Towers of pale opal leaning on the sky…Take my soul, lying in the blue-black grasses,Burn it with blue flame, for to-day I die.Here in the deep'ning drift of many petals,Here where the shadows pass with noiseless tread,Blue phantoms stealing down the silent pine-ways,Tenderly lay me when my life is fled.Let only young priests bear my withered body—Eyes filled with wonder 'neath their azure hoods—Let only maidens, dancing in their frailness,Chant the Blue Magic of the sacred woods.Pass by and leave me to the peace of silenceHere in the forest, and the night's dim blue.…Soon will the flame of the up-burning incenseThrow its last flicker on the ghostly dew.Only the darkness and the burnt-out torches—Only the blue pall of the lonely sky—Only the sighing round the shrouded figure—Only the wraiths of starlight drifting by.Death, and a sleeping in the long blue grasses.…Into the Twilight Temple—hush! he passes.The Fairy HorseO Manikin! Let me away, away!Take off my bridle of magic threadMade from the hair of a witch's head;Take off my saddle of acorn leaves,For the moon has come up and I cannot stay.O the moon has come up o'er the stable door,And keen as the golden whip when you ride,She lashes her moonbeams upon my side,Pokes in the bundles of thistle hay,Silvers the cobbles upon the floor.And my shoes were made from the moon's gold rindForged in a restless fairy fire,And they burn on my feet—O my elfin sire,I must break at the fetters which keep me back,I must fly with the red, red mane behind,Till I drop exhausted at break of dayIn some garden of flowers, on the foam of some wave,On the top of some hill, at the mouth of some cave.…How the crescent-shaped shoes dance on my feet!O Manikin, let me away, away!SongI have kissed the moonlight—No kiss of mortal flameCould touch my lips so softly,And make them burn the same.The moon is on the white tree,And the white tree's by the wall,And I leaned and kissed a blossom…So softly did it fall,So softly and with flutteringLike a petal butterflyWith ghostly wings a-tremble,That I, mortal-like, did cryAnd press my two hands swiftlyTo cover up my kiss—How can I sleep, O moonlight,With a wakefulness like this?Marna Service.
The Noosing of the Sun-God"Tiraha, Te Ra! I am Maui,—Maui, the bantling, the darling;—Maui, the fire-thief, the jester;—Maui, the world's fisherman!Thou art the Sun-God,Te Ra of the flaming hair.Heretofore man is thy moth.What is the life of man,Bound to thy rushing wings,Thou fire-bird of Rangi?A birth in a burning;A flash and a war-word;A failing, a fallingOf ash to the ashesOf bottomless Po!"I am Maui!The great one, the little one;A bird that could nestIn the hand of a woman.I—I have vanquishedThe Timeless, the Ancients.The Heavens cannot bind me,But I shall bind thee,Tiraha, Te Ra!"Ah, the red day Of the fighting of Maui!How he waxed, how he grew;How the Earth Mother shook!And the sea was afraid,And receded and moanedLike a babe that is chidden.The rope that was spunIn the White World of MauiWith blessing and cursingCurled on the dazzlingNeck of Te Ra."A pull for the livingThat gasp in the light!A pull for the deadIn abysses of Po!A pull for the babesThat are not but shall beIn the cool, in the dawn,In the calm of Hereafter!Tiraha, Te Ra!"The sky was a smotherOf flame and commotion.Low leaped the red fringesTo harass the mountains,And Maui laughed out:"Hu, hu, the feathersOf the fire-bird of Rangi!"But the rope of the blessing,The rope of the cursing,It shrivelled and broke.He stooped to the coilsAnd twisted them thrice,And thickly he threw itOn the neck of Te Ra."Twice for the living!And twice for the dead!And twice for the long Hereafter!All the heart of the heavens,The heart of the earth,Hung on the rope of Maui.But the red lizards licked it,The fire-knives chipped it,It frittered and broke.Then Maui stood forthOn the moaning headlandsAnd looked up to Io—Io, the Nameless, the Father,To whom the eyes pray,But whom the tongue names not.And a thin voice clave the fireAs the young moon cleaves the blueLike a shark's tooth in the heavens."O my son, my son, and why are thy hands so red?Wilt fight the fire with fire, or bind the Eterne with deeds?Shatter the strong with strength?—Nay, like to unlike is wed;What man goes forth to the river to smite a reed with reeds?"Soft and wan is water, yet it is stronger than fire;Pale and poor is patience, yet it is stronger than pride.Out of the uttermost weakness cometh the heart's desire:Thou shalt bind the Eternal with need and naught beside."Plait thee a rope of rays, twist thee a cord of light;Twine thee a tender thread that never was bought or sold;Twine thee a living thread of sorrow and ruth and right,And were there twenty suns in Rangi, the rope shall hold."Then Maui bowed his headAnd smote his palms together.—"Ina, my sister, little one, heed!Give me thy hair."Ina, the Maiden of Light,Gave him her hair.Swiftly he wove it,Laughing out to the skies:"Thrice for the living!Thrice for the dead!And thrice for the long Hereafter!"The thin little cordFlew fast on the windPast the Eyes of the KingsTo the neck of Te Ra.And then was the pull,The red lizards licked it,The fire-knives chipped it,But it stood, but it held!And measured and slowEvermore was the flightOf the fire-bird of Rangi.Slumber SongNeither to fight nor plead, my dear,Home to the low long nestOn the holy sod of the plains of God,And it's only to rest, to rest.Neither to sift nor weigh, my dear,Neither to sow nor reap,For the balance is true, and the sickle is through,And it's only to sleep, to sleep.Neither to will nor plan, my dear,Neither to smile nor sigh;For home is the fruit to the altar foot,And it's only to die, to die.Jessie Mackay.
Dead TimberThese are not ours—the isles of columned whiteness,Set in an old and legend-whispering sea;Nor crowning domes that take the morning's brightness,Praising the Lord in open majesty;Nor arches' hushed, eternal invocation;Nor windows glowing with the love of God;Nor slender minarets that take their station,Like spears ascending where the faithful trod.There, on the hillside, is our nation's building,The tall dead trees so bare against the sky.They neither kisst he morn nor take the sunset's gilding,They hear no brimming prayer, no sinner's cry.But in the desolation of our making,Where prey at will the sun and wind and rain,They call the sky to witness of our breaking,They tell the stars the story of our gain.Unranked and formless, stark they stand, unheedingThe whisper of their brothers, soon to die.Their hearts are dry from the bright axe's bleeding,And dead the music of their leaves' long sigh.Mute in their misery of devastation,They hold between us and the living light,In twisted agony of revelation,The lifeless litter of the field of fight.Yet if some ask: "Where is your art, your writingBy which we know that you have aught to say?"We shall reply: "Yonder, the hillcrest blighting,There is our architecture's blazoned way.This monument we fashioned in our winning,A gibbet for the beauty we have slain;Behold the flower of our art's beginning,The jewel in the circlet of her reign!"Yet so doth patient beauty work, subduingThe very husks of death to gracious ends;The heavy, plodding days, their task pursuing,Slowly transmute these victims into friends.Dwelling with them, we take them to our living;Looking on them, we wed them to our sight;Resting with us, they grant us their forgiving,And creep into the round of our delight.Less were the dawn in miracle unfolding,Did these return not to the breathless hill.Disturbed the heart, known loveliness beholding,Did these not watch us as the hours fill.Strange were the hush of eve by mists enchanted,Did these not stand to catch the floating flowers.Common the moonlight by the shadows hauntedBut for the mystery of these lightless towers.Some day our feet may walk where art is golden;Then round our hearts will lap the tides of time.We shall be one with dwellings rich and olden,And fragrant prospects sweet with ancient rhyme.Yet, though we go where memories come thronging,And wonder leads us wheresoe'er we roam,Through our delight will creep the voice of longing—O dear, dead timber on the hills of home!Soldier SettlementIn Comfort Street the shop-fronts blaze;The well-fed people laugh and driftAlong the smooth, enticing ways,And wear their fortune as a gift.Here wheels in cushioned service purr,And buttons pressed command delight;And soft, obsequious odours stirThe languors of an ordered night.And in the frippery of talkYou catch: "Here's butter down again—Poor farmers! "—"Yes, I think The HawkWill win … Ten quid on Lover's Lane."Haggard he looks about his world—The leaning shack, the broken fence,The little flag of green unfurledBefore the forest's walled defence;The dwindling, unconditioned herdNosing about the barren burn;The mocking of the care-free bird;The creeping barrage of the fern.Without, the hidden enemyThat strikes beneath its green deceit;Within, the long-drawn agonyWhen love and hope may never meet.He looks along the bitter yearsTo when the myriad bugles thrilled;When duty banked the fount of tears,And life with high adventure filled.In that unfathomable pitOf blasting death or doom long drawn,Where anguish of a night was litBy presage of a dreadful dawn,He saw beyond the murdered earthAnd moaning of the tortured skies,The promise of his place of birth,A dream-home to his weary eyes.And over all the undying Cause,And goodly fellowship of kin."If I should die 'twould make no pauseIn certainty's long reckoning."For there death could not conquer hope,Master of faith was never found,And on the long, red battle slopeThe soldier fell, but won his ground.But here, in this remote reward,No banner flies aloft to cheer;The arm that, stricken, drops the swordSinks in a common black despair.Resolve with love high-hearted wentTo fame this gift of wilderness;Now high is low and hearts are spentAnd lord of all is sharp distress.All this he sees, and turns againTo face dear eyes that love but dread—Hunger and want, the deeper painThat knows at last that hope is dead.Dully by fire's caprice he readsIn news prepared by comfort's hands,Of how the city over-breeds—"The land, young man! Go on the land!"Alan Mulgan.
SilverstreamAt Silverstream, in Maoriland, the hours are very young;They dance to the measure that the cascades sing,And the gay days at Silverstream are little beads hung,Turquoise and amber, on a fine gold strings.The soft winds of Silverstream walk down the valley aislesLaden with the gorse-scent and many tui tunes;They part the sweet manuka scrub and cross the meadow milesTo frolic with a sea-wind tramping the dunes.There are great hills at Silverstream, mysterious with trees;Here and there a plume where the toi-toi nods;And the green hills at Silverstream are down upon their knees—Down upon their knees, girl, like great grim gods!'Tis fine to feel the tall reeds against the finger-tips,The feet dance-dancing to the white stream's strain;For all the air of Silverstream puts music on the lips,And all the hours of Silverstream go dancing through the brain—Dancing through the brain, girl, and every strolling windCrooks a rounded elbow, inviting tired hands.And the fragrance of Silverstream puts magic in the mind,The sweet winds of Silverstream lead on to magic lands.The waters of Silverstream throw lace across the stones—Silver lace and silver spray all in the silver air!And the valley-place of Silverstream is musical with tones,Like an old Greek chorus on a moss-grown stair.The hunched hills at Silverstream are ponderous with prayer,And the incense of Silverstream is heavy roundtheir knees; But the white clouds at Silverstream are twining in the air,And the swift wings at Silverstream are whirling in the breeze.White clouds and wings, girl, joyous o'er the meads,Slim feet and swift blood, riotous with youth,Take the string of gold days, tell the glowing beads,Where the streams and birds chant the litany of truth!Wet WeatherPools upon the pavement, round as pallid moons;Sobs within the doorways, tears upon the pane!High up in the housetops the cool wind croons;The dim streets of Wellington are musical with rain!The tramcars of Wellington go droning through the hours,Waking fountains from the rails where rinkling rivers race;And each is like a brown bee amid the dewy flowers,For each is like a brown bee with dew upon its face.And the tramcars of Wellington, the little weeping cars,Are filled with wagging round heads, like peas within the pod;And the wee streets of Wellington know neither sun nor starsWhen Wellington is hidden in the flowing robes of God.But the wet folk of Wellington go laughing to and fro—Oh, every heart's a merry heart that's sheltered from the rain;And a grey phrase whispers of the storms of long ago,And a gay lip is singing that the wind will swing again.The garden of the Cityside is breaking into bloom—Shop fronts are tulip beds, and some are daffodils;And lights like early primroses are showing 'mid the gloomBehind the swaying curtains, above the window-sills.The swift winds of Wellington may swing into the west,The clouds o'er Terawhiti may break within the south;The rain-song of Wellington will linger in my breast,For the moist kiss of Wellington is music on my mouth!Wellington LightsThe high hills of Wellington are like a balustradeThat the winds walk over, and the tired, dim sun;And the weary little city is drowsing in the shade,And the harbour lights of Wellington are waking, one by one.The harbour-tide of Wellington is laving pier and bay,And wrinkles are upon it, and many a flowing fold;And the visage of the waters is very drawn and grey,For the harbour-tide of Wellington is very, very old.But the young lights, the bright lights, are wonderfullyDancing from the shadows and twinkling here and there;Like little eyes that watch the tardy passing of the day;—Like golden slippers flashing on a dim, dark stair.And the lights upon the steamers a-dream beside the pier!Red lights and green lights on many an idle boat,Beam through the cool shades marvellously clearAnd blithe as the singing from a deep-sea throat!Oh, some are ruddy rich lights, and some are sere and dim;But each finds an echo in the dark, still wave,And each wakes my heart to an old-time hymn,And the harbour lights of Wellington are notes upon the stave.And the night streets of Wellington are leading froms the sea,Twining in and winding out like little yellow ropes;And the street lights of Wellington are very dear to me,And the street lights of Wellington go winding up the slopes.Amethysts and moonstones and ilakes of polished jade,Blended together with an old-world charm;The city lights of Wellington are showing 'mid the shade,A glowing heap of jewels on a negro's palm.Boyce Bowden.
The PartingThe hills shouldered the faint stars from the skyAs we, descending, on the steep road went.The wind thrilled in the grass with a lone cry,And our last hour was spent.Empty and bleak around us was the night,The sea spread out, a dark, illimitable plain,And on the shore the surf tossed flames of whiteThat broke and sank again.The sunny hill-top where we talked alone,Golden and scented with the late blown broom,Seemed like a place imagined, but not known,In this estranging gloom.For the blue glory of the autumn day,The honey-coloured sunlight of our hill,Had faded wanly into dun and grey,And then the dark, and this invading chill.And all the sunless unconsoling shadeLike a cold tide into our two hearts flowed;A desolate dumbness on our lips was laidIn that last hour as we went down the road.Columbine's HouseThere's a small house in a garden green and small,A jonquil garden, the warm haunt of bees,And by the door two old camellia treesGrow stiff and stately, fair and trim and tall.They always bloom too early, and spring showersTarnish and rob them as the cold gusts pass,Scattering like white rosettes upon the grassThe lovely, formal, scentless, waxen flowers.But O! on moonlight nights, when they are drawnIn shining, flower-decked shapes against the sky,When the white billowy clouds of spring drift by,And lovely mystery wraps the little lawn,They take my heart with loveliness, they lookLike trees in some old magic woods, or moreLike guardians set by an enchanted door,Or decorations from an ancient book.With such sweet art the empty stage is set,One half-expects light music to begin,While Columbine, a dainty marionette,Opens the door and beckons Harlequin.Alice A. Kenny.
At NightWas it the whisper of the rain—The odour of drenched air—Unlocked some chamber of my brain,Brown eyes, bronze hair?Some sound, some odour caught my sense,A breathless interludeHeld me an instant, rapt and tense,In strange clairvoyant mood.Here, just a little while ago,I sat with dull contentIn gloom suffused with ruddy glowFrom embers nearly spent,When, swift, remote as in a trance,Remote, but visioned plain,A fragment of our strained romanceSurged back to me again.The wan dawn glimmered bleak and bareFrom close, rain-sodden skies,And lit upon the drift of hairAcross your sleep-sealed eyes.Tapping a rhythmic, harsh refrainTo my heart's monody,I heard, a-beat against the pane,The draggled lemon-tree.The moment's poignant vision stirredAnd went so eerily—The vivid light flared out and blurred;Dull glints of memoryFlickered through darkness darker made.Now, crowding everywhere,Are ghosts of deeds and dreams decayed—Ghosts of what once we were.Our laughing days with sun dispersed,Our weary days with careAre blown away—they are all dead,Brown eyes, bronze hair,Nothing is stable, nothing stays—As listless leaves are we,Adrift upon Time's windy waysAcross Eternity.Rondel"Still there's sunshine on the wall."If there lacked of wine or breadIt was thus that Sancho shedEvery care that might befall.Are you wiser, you who callSancho fool? Could you have said:"Still there's sunshine on the wall,"If there lacked of wine or bread?Though your wisdom would appalSancho Panza's clownish head,Wisest he who sang, instead,Of the cares that irk us all,"Still there's sunshine on the wall."Ships that PassFrom Fantasy's bright islesCareening galleys stream;Hope waits through weary whiles—But no long-oared triremeFilled full with precious freight,Anchors where, desolate,She waits her ships of dream.Though she may call and cryThey will not pause or stay—Wind-fresh, they thunder by,Grow dim, and drive awayTo quiet seas that laveWith faint and restless waveA twilight land of grey.She sees with wistful eyesGreat barques blow gallantlyFrom where the fading skiesBend down to kiss the sea—Surging they come, and pass,But none draw in, alas!Towards her weedy quay.To lands of legendryThe brave ships make their way;In grave futilityHope watches night and dayFor ships that come not in.…With face and pulse grown thinShe only waits to pray.Dick Harris.
I Have an Endless JoyI have an endless joy in these—The orange tips of willow trees;The rusty brown of quiet pools;The underneaths of mushroom stools;The musky scent of golden gorse;The stately tree-fern, and the sponginess of thick-grown moss…And cattle madly fleeing from a train;And far-off clouds that drape grey veils of rainAcross a fading sky…The sound that quail make when they fly…The scent of rain-washed ferns, and yellow broom;And fluffy sprays of pollened wattle-bloom…And autumn leaves … and bulbs among the grass…And frosted earth that crunches as you pass…And now, from out the honey-laden trees,A tui's burst of praise has crowned all these.LullabyDearest, tuck the bed clothes inWhile I sing to theeOf the buds that I have foundOn the apple-tree;Of the violets I have seenPeeping through the grass—Hush, my little sleepy one,I hear the Sandman pass!Dearest, close your dreaming eyes—Night is coming soon;Primroses shall dance for youUnderneath the moon.Scent of brown and yellow broomClings about the wall—Hush, my little sleepy one,I hear the Sandman call!EscapeI went a-singingOut of the town,Where grey hawks were wingingUp hill and down.Just for a littleI let the world fall,And found myself poorerBy nothing at all.Molly Howden.
The Shining CuckooSo you have come across the pathless skies,Dear migrant messenger, ordained to bringGreeting from other lands to our young SpringHere blinking sunbeams from his dewy eyes.The year has not forgotten, æon-wise,The bird that comes on swift and punctual wingThe first green hour with votive offeringTo the old carol-haunted tree's surprise.I listen to your song and I am oldAs infant wonder in the eyes of EveSeeing young Adam on the Eden sodBeaming his wonder back that in such mouldOne spirit had the daring to conceiveWoman and Spring—twin harmonies of God.MaroonedUpon our island's low and level sand,Where past the coral reef the swift tides run,Notching a foolish stick for every sun,With a half-eager and half-hopeless hand,I saw the ghost of a rude sailor stand,Haggard, unkempt and utterly undone—Trapped like a gnat within a gossamer spunAround the horns, as cynic Fate had planned.Are we no more to Fate than a voice heardCalling the æons by creation's wheel;No more, no more to Time than a midge slainWithin a sunbeam by a migrant bird,Or than a star, crunched under God's great heel,Glimmering to darkness in the vast Inane?The FlightDay after day I saw them gatheringFrom all along the desolated tide—Fleet-winged old kuakas on pinions triedAnd strong young birds on still unproven wing.Day after day—and then not anythingBut empty air and ocean vast and wide,I knowing only how my heart had criedAt their so seeming treason to the Spring.Here Had They Nested; On This Tawny ShoreThey Raced Between The Foam Lines On The SandThen Flew To Arctic Summer From The South.I Heard Them Pause; Heard, Too, The Waves DeploreThe Disavowed And Solitary Land—The Sea-Rime Raw And Bitter In My Mouth.D. M. Ross.
The Kissing of PegeenIn the valley of little red treesThe grey dogs were hunting the hare;With the kirtle of green to her kneesCame the fairy Pegeen to me there;With the hare running under the treesPegeen made a song to me there.Yellow girls, with the sun on their feet,Ran in and out of the wood;Sure, the air with their voices was sweetAround the green place where I stood—Och, the grass in the toes of their feetWas green with a laugh where they stood.Pegeen, fairy girl, she could singTill the daffodils stept to the tune,And a thorn-tree, in bud at the Spring,Let up a clean leaf to the noon.Pegeen, fairy girl, it was Spring,And the sun was just warm at the noon.Och! dimples she had to be sure,With her hair like the wing of a crow,And the white of her neck was a cureFor a heart that was beating too slow—Och, Pegeen, fairy girl! To be sure,Mine couldn't be beating too slow.'Twas the laugh of the girls in the sun,'Twas the green on the lap of the world,'Twas the way my wits fluttered and spun,'Twas the way that her eyelashes curledMade me mad for a kiss in the sun,Where her lips at the corner were curled.Pegeen, fairy girl, she could dance;'Twas not easy to come at her waist.Och! she puckered my soul with her glance,But her lips had a wonderful taste;Sure, the fairy girl led me a danceTill I caught her pink mouth for a taste.There's a fairy path over the hill,There's a fairy bridge over the stream;'Twas her song that was leading me stillAnd I went like a man in a dream.…There were little red trees on the hill,And the end of the road was a dream.Sure, I dreamt like a little brown hare,'Twas me that the grey dogs would chase.Och, fur is too handy to wear!Give me back the red kiss on my face!Pegeen, I'm a little brown hare,Och, give a man back his poor face!Yellow girls, with the sun on their feet,Run in and out of the wood.Troth, the sound of their voices is sweet,And the swish of their kirtles is good.…There are little black toes on my feet,And to stop the grey dogs would be good.The SingersWe shall walk daintily in later dewOn sweet, far mornings speaking these grave words,Wearing worn silver on our garments blueWhile Spring is full of nests and cheeping birds.And when the clocks chime on and hearts forget,We shall be very still, as are the wise,Nursing the dreams that make us fairer yetFor the wide wondering of newer eyes.Above our heads shall soar large roof and dome,Long windows flaking colour through the gloom,Where the great music has its silent homeAnd rich old bindings in the shadows bloom.But we shall rise and go away, awayDown happy meadows to the calling seas,And speak all moments of the yellow dayOr sing to moonlight in the lisping trees.Leaves rustle brownly in the autumn wind.All books shall fade. But in a realm apart,We shall go fearlessly through all the blind,Green places of the ever-singing heart.And we shall hear and know, too glad for pride,The hot, sweet words our rebel dreamings hurledAgainst cold Thought's despair come as a tideFlooding across the evening of the world.David McKee Wright.
QuestioningsThe blind worm spoke to Saint FrancisFrom the mould of Assisi's wood:"What thinkest thou, Brother,Shall be the reward of goodAnd virtuous wormsWhen Death shall bar the way?A richer loamWith softer, sweeter clay?No stone to turn the path?And never bird to fill the dayWith fear, when rain shall breakIn silver brightness on the lawnAnd worms are temptedPast their power, to rise?Would you, Saint Francis, sayThat such is Paradise?"And a bird dippedFrom blue to bough:"Thinkest thouThat in the Paradisal LandsPeaches will growThat will be birds' alone?And cherries in cool leafiness?And never snowWill hide from our fond eyesThe Eternal LawnWhose long, lush worms will riseEven as the appetite doth riseWithin the bird?—Thinkest thouThis, Brother?""My little Ones," Saint Francis said,"What can mortal know,Save that Desire will be fulfilledOr that Desire will go?He that created worm and birdWould surely make it so.'Tis only here belowThat thirsts unquenched go."Ida Withers.
The MailsThe tail-rods leap in their bearings—They rise with a rush and ring;They sink to the sound of laughter,And hurried and short they sing—We carry the Mails—His Majesty's Mails—Make way for the Mails of the King!We've swung her head for the open bay,And, spun by the prisoned steam,The screws are drumming the miles awayWhere the bright star-shadows dream.She lifts and sways to the ocean's swell;The light-house glares on high,And the fisher-lads in their boats will tellHow they saw the Mail go byAthrill from keel to her quivering spars,With the screw-foam boiling white,And black smoke dimming the watching starsAs it soared through the soundless night."Full speed ahead!" shout the racing rods—"Full speed!" and spray on the rail!We'll heed no order to stop save God's,For we are the Ocean Mail.The big fish shudder to hear the thudAnd stamp of our engine-room,As we thunder on, with our decks a-flood,Through the blind, bewildering gloom.A faint, hoarse hail, and a waving light—The whirr of our steering-gear—And we are staggering in our flightWith a fishing-boat just clear.We carry the wealth of the world, I trow,And the power and fame of men,The angry word, and the lover's vow,All held in the turn of a pen.And stars swing out in the skies a-thrill,And the weary stars grow pale;But night and day we are driving still,For we are the Ocean Mail.The sailing-craft and the clumsy trampsLoom up and are lost astern,And the stars of their bridge and mast-head lampsAre the only stars that burn.To the clash and ring of the v/hirling steel,And the crash and swing of the seas,We carry the grief that the mothers feelAs they sob and pray on their knees.The cares and joys of the throbbing worldAre measured in piston-strokes,When the bright prow-smother is split and hurled,And the hot wake steams and smokes.To the swinging blows of the heavy throws,And the slide-valve's moaning wail,We'll swing and soar with our flues a-roar,For we are the Ocean Mail,They watch for us at the harbour-mouth,And wait for us on the quay,Looking ever to east and southFor our head-light on the sea.And onward, surging, we're racing fastWhere the shy mermaiden dwells,And the crested kings of the deep ride past(Oh! the pomp of the rolling swells).Lone lighthouse-men, when they see our starLift clear of the starry maze,Will watch us swagger across the barAnd swing to the channelled ways.Yet never a sign or a sound we give—No blast of horn or a hail—For we must race that the world may live,And we are the Ocean Mail.The good screws, labouring under,Laugh loud as they lift and flingThe eddying foam behind them,And muttering low they sing— Make way for the Mails— His Majesty's Mails—We carry the Mails for the King!The Red West RoadOff-shore I hear the great propellers thunder,And throb and thrash so steadily and slow;Their booming cadence tells of seas that plunder—Of Love's moon-seas and brave hearts thrown asunder,Of hot, red lips and battles, blow for blow;And as they sing my heart is filled with wonder,Though why—I scarcely know.Perhaps it is because they tell a storyAnd lift a deep storm-measure as they come—A song of old-time love and battles gory,When men dared hell and sailed through sunset's glory,With pealing trumpet tuned to rolling drum,To hunt and loot and sink the jewelled quarryIn seas too deep to plumb.I only know I watch the steamers goingAlong the Red West Road with heavy heart,And, when the night comes, look for head-lights showing,And mark their speed—the ebb-tide or the flowing;For loath am I to see them slew and startAdown that path; and every deep call blowingStabs like a driven dart.The blazing west to me is always calling,For in the west there burns my brightest star.…Oh, God! to hear the anchor-winches hauling,And feel her speeding, soaring high and falling,With steady swing across the brawling bar—To hear the stem-struck rollers tumble sprawling,And watch the lights afar.To south and east and north the screws are singingSo steadily and tunefully and slow;But on the Western Track they thunder, flingingTheir wake afoam, and by their roar and ringing,By laughter sweet, deep in my heart, I knowThat down that Red West Road, with big screws swinging,Some day I'll go.Will Lawson.
Old ManOld man, old man, walled warmly in with peace,From sorrow and delight you sit apart.From mirth and agony at last releaseComes, and the strange occasions of the heartTrouble no more the ways of your white age.Turn in your head against the breast of timeOld man, old man, for ended is the fightAnd quieter than an unremembered rhymeAnd quieter than day-haunted trees at nightYou shall slip into the silence and be gone.Being dead, they'll clog your mouth lest you arise,Made bold by dealings with the worms and dust,And shout, with soil still crusted on your eyes,How both the ploughshare and the sword are rust,And God as aimless as a drifted shell.The CrippleNot for me a roof-tree, child or lover,But only this white roomAnd all the patient starsPeering through the barsInto my prison's gloom—This whiteness, and the magic night for cover.Not for me the smooth delight of leapingInto the water clear—Only the chair's restraint,The brilliance of white paint,Not sunlight like a spearTo stab the waters and my soul from sleeping.Not for me a roof-tree, child or lover,This is my fate. For meTo grow quiet and linedKnowing love only kind,Tasting no ecstasy.Night, gently bend and lend me of your cover.Betty Riddell.
A Time will Come (1915)
A time will come, a time will come,(Though the world will never be quite the same),When the people sit in the summer sun,Watching, watching the beautiful game.A time will come, a time will come,With fifteen stars in a green heaven,Two to be batting, two to judge,And round about them the fair Eleven.A time will come, a time will come,When the people sit with a peaceful heart,Watching the beautiful, beautiful game,That is battle and service and sport and art.A time will come, a time will come,When the crowds will gaze on the game and the green,Soberly watching the beautiful game,Orderly, decent, calm, serene.The easy figures go out and in,The click of the bat sounds clear and well,And over the studying, critical crowdsCricket will cast her witching spell.Yet a time will come, a time will come,Come to us all as we watch, and seemTo be heart and soul in the beautiful game,When we shall remember and wistfully dream—Dream of the boys who never were here,Born in the days of evil chance,Who never knew sport or easy days,But played their game in the fields of France.The WitWhile the dull talk idly streams,He sits upon the bank and dreams,Till some careless word that's saidFinds a fellow in his head.—He with one great bound is borneFrom Dent Blanche to Matterhorn;And his passage is so fastOver that abyss so vast,He has not seen how bluely shinesThe deep gulf in his pelt of pines,Nor heard the waste and watery voiceWherewith the wind-washed pines rejoice.In a moment's thousandth part,In the beat of the bee's heart,He has flown it: 'tis awayWhere the kite and eagle play.Tho' the chamois, lithe and fine,Passes it 'twixt wake and dine;Tho' the dun geier, gaunt and lean,Flash across that gulf betweenSol's first footing of his bedAnd the covering of his head,What he's compassed in one strideIs two days for the Zermatt guide.Arnold Wall.
AdventureWhy should I grieve to think that on a dayI must return again as all men mustTo my beginnings—dust to careless dust?For well I know that, scattered by Time's hand,My dust shall live in every wind that blows;I shall be one with each new flower that grows;And I shall knowStrange places lit by shining friendly stars,The wonder and the beauty of far lands.I shall be fashioned by soft childish handsAnd be contented so.LullabySwift is the coming of sleep to the clear eyes of childhood,Droops your bright head to the lilt of my lullaby song,One strange, sweet moment I hold you'twixt waking and sleeping,Then on a breath you are gone from me—gone from my keeping.What do you see, little one, with the eyes that you close to me?Whither and whence are the ways that your baby feet tread?Are other songs that you hearas sweet as my singing?Do you find arms that are tenderas mine and as clinging?Swift is the coming of sleep and swift too awakening,With the gold gleam of the morning you will come backFrom the poppy-starred meadows of dreams,ah, do not regret them;I shall enfold you with loveand make you forget them.S. M. Sunley.
Gulls at SunsetIn from the sunset west,With sunset tints on wing and snowy breast,Rose-coloured sky above, rose-coloured earth below,To some far rocky gorge, hidden and cold and grey,Leaving the pageant of departing day,Circling and sweeping out to the night they go.Blue is the distant eastBlue as a shadowland where life has ceased—Unhesitating wings speed on the lonely flight.Out to that cloudy east, taking the sea-gulls' way,My heart turns also from the hues of day,Out to the confines of the blue waiting night.Spiders' WebsAll yesterdayThey hung but phantom things, unnoticed, grey,Under grey skies, forerunner of night mist.But while we sleptCloser the white mist round about us crept,And, morning-kissed,See how they glisten, decked with many a gem,Each strand a jewelled rope. The world seems full of them,Clinging to bush and fence and grassy stem.M. H. Poynter.
MiraclesThe Half-Wit said: "I walked with Him—God—as He went His lonely way.Tenderly, tremulously, the slimTall trees leant down to pray."I bent no knee, I who am I,A God myself, enwrapt with flame,Who storms all night across the skyAnd calls each star by name."His forehead shone incarnadin'd,The flowers they sang about His feet,His voice was like a silken windFrom thickets summer-sweet."Complacently He bade me turnTo mark His handicraft … to noteA hill with living glory burn,A fleet of clouds afloat,"New grass up-springing after rain,New wings astir within the nest,A tired bee laden with his gain,A beauty-haunted West."I, God as He was God, stood stillIn the deep hush horizon-wide,Remembering a shape of ill—A wistful lad, wide-eyed,"Who from his cradle crawled to knowWhatever else the years might send,That like a maimed thing he must goUnto his desperate end."C. A. Marris.
Though Inland Far We BeLike flakes of snow when April sun laughs out,Like leaves caught up and dancing in the breeze,Behind the plough they throng, a careless routOf jolly pirates that have quit the seasAnd turned inland to smell the broken earthAnd catch what booty lies in that brown wake;Or circling on ahead, to ring with mirthThe ploughman's path, till he his way must takeThrough clouds of flashing wings, as though there spedA heavenly robber-band around his head.Mary Pumphrey.
The Last ChoiceIf in a thousand years my dust took formAnd in the night, beneath a thunderous storm,High on the wind there rode a Shade who said,"Cast back your mind to when you were not dead.I give you choice, for you have tasted both,Will you have life once more, or are you loathTo break the silence where your sleep has lainThese many years?" should I say, "Not againCan winds awaken the remembered sting,Or summer days their lightsome sandals bring.Black was the beech glade in the forest way.I should see vice acclaimed in open day,Dives in heaven and Lazarus in hellUntil their lives were done, and both were well.Life gives ill measure, and, though Death gives none,Yet Death brings justice underneath the sun.There is but one God, He whose name is Death,At whose dread coming evil vanisheth.Him shall I worship through the lightless daysWith voiceless music and with muted praise.And in his service let my sleep be long,For in his kingdom there is done no wrong."* * * * *I do not know that I should say this truth,For I might turn, as turned the heart of RuthHomeward from labour in the stranger's corn,To think upon the land where I was born.I might remember valley, hill and plain,And, blinded, look upon them clear again.And I might watch until earth's eventide,As she whom, watching by her lord's bedsideUntil Death let him in that Flemish land,They found, her face cupped in her snowy hand,With wide eyes gazing on the Breton shore,But seeing naught, and naught; nor ever more.R. F. Fortune.
The StreetLong hours the asphalt, grimed, blistered and old,A haggard monotone of weary grey,Smoulders in dull hostility. The dayWith challenging splendour, arrogant blue and gold,.Mocks at the humbled ugliness; a boldVagabond wind flings in its face his strayLitter of insult; urchin dust-whirls playTheir fitful games in the gutters. … But behold—The dusk falls, and along the purpling streetNight strews her silence: cool and still, the airEnfolds the throbbing hours in a softForgetfulness. The kindly shadows meetIn noiseless converse, and the lamps aloftCaress with silver pavements suddenly fair.J. H. E. Schröder.
The PhœnicianFar in the darkening east sinks Tyre o'er the shimmering waters:Broken her towers, and bowed 'neath the proud Persian her locks.Bent to the earth are her virgins, and naught the pride of her merchants;Furled are her sails for aye, rent her benches and looms.Into the west I bear me that once was captain of thousands,Now of forty the chief, fleeing in shame from the sword.Naught but the loud wind claps in the shrouds, and the manes of our horsesToss as they neigh to the foam, anxious, unsettled and strange.Still is the moon and the sky mocks the wild, passionate ocean,E'en as the mood of my heart frets at the calm of the gods.Are ye laughing in scorn, that ye so tear your creation?Her ye built in delight, child of all pleasure, our Tyre—Lord of dangerous seas, and blood that throbbed at adventure,Born to seek the unknown, build on all desolate coasts—Her ye give to the bent-browed Cyrus, the lover of bowmen.She is destroyed, my life! She is laid bare, my love!Tyre! Shall thy worthless sons bear naught of thee forth to the ocean,Yet the blood of thy heart throbs in alien lands?Tyre! Wherever we sail thou art, thou proud one, not fallen,Thou art not castles and towers, thou art our hearts and our souls.Wide through the world we wander and scatter thy restless endeavour,Build we a little Tyre e'er when our foot shall tread earth;E'en to the Blessed Isles sow we the seed of thy thirsting,Seekers of farthest lands, of Ultima Thule the lords.Never a lyre is wrung on the cliffs of ocean-kissed HellasBut a wild sound on the wind sings to the sailor at sea.Never a fight is fought on the brow on the Asian mountains,But with the milk of the bard suckles the warrior born.Never a city dead, but her soul on the wings of the agesInto the mouth of the new blows the great breath of the old.Shout, for Tyre shall survive, and over the years that are dawningEver her spirit of quest run like a wind through the grass.Shout, for the day that stirs is the, child of the day that is waning,She that is dead is born, Tyre, for the ages, Tyre!Eric Lee Palmer.
Housewife SonnetThere is a beauty in neglected things,—The violet whiteness of the settled dustOn chair and mantel, the unchallenged rustOn knives that cut sour lemon into rings.I mark the water beetle's carven wingsBefore my foot has stamped him with disgust.This mildewed bread, I notice, has a crustOf softer orange than the autumn brings.Nay, let me brush a cobweb from the wall,I am a vandal to the spider's art,—That novel pattern crushed, what can recall?I cannot play the housewife's grudging part,Sponge out the artistry of time, with allThe colour and the form the hours dispart.Mary Heath.
Chant1
Here is a gulf of amber dropping downLike the clear gleam of honey from a jar.No wind moves any shallow to a frown;Hills sleep like an old turret clov'n with scarHealed by the grey romances. Will a thoughtA Greek maid dropped upon the dappled sandCome to our gleaming silence who have soughtNepenthe in this clean, untrodden land?
2
The sea from warm iEgina may have filledThe watery apse behind the rock with wordsHer pained heart poured about her so they stilledThe air with love's caress. The waves were birdsTo bear athwart the vast blue hemisphereHer adoration, her felicity,Her mournfulness, her desolating fearThat love is never all that love can be.
3
Or bears the sea a vow of Pericles?The shining armour of his fortitudeGlittering to memory through the centuriesFor men that love a God's similitude.For them that love the true, Eternity,Not all forgetting life's perpetual quest,Moves through the troubled triumph of the sea,And though we know it not God is confest.
4
Heart, drop below the horizon vague the earthThou bearest evermore mid hum of men;Conceive immaculately a new birth,Thought, wonder, and delight; with power againTo be the foster-child of magic. Soul,Take all the virgin forest and the hills,And the impetuous cataract to its goalThe sea, for thy triumphant strength that fillsThy shadeless leaping forth anew: abideNo longer with recumbent sloth that fails,Companion to salt tears—rise deifiedLike sleeping isle awaked by morning on far sails.
5
I would believe no man hath ever trodThese altar steps fringed with the cold seaweed.Let me be here thy sacristan, O God,Sundered from Earth's low thought and lower deed.Power primitive is over all the beach,The solemn cliff leans evermore to hear,The cloud is like the stricken hart to reachSeclusion of the hills—I feel anearMighty emotion stifled in grey townsSickening with sin, and cold and deaf and blindTo exaltation loving old renownsOf men who sought the last recesses of God's mind.
6
I am as one who looketh on a ghost.Transfigured from the earth, here I am madePart of the secrecy withheld the mostOf all the mighty Being hath displayed.The elements of carnal life are hid—The strife, the fall, the joy too cheaply spent;The selfish ecstasy—and I am bidTake heart for Death's awaiting complement.What is too pure for daily breath I breathe,What too magnificent for light I see;Thoughts chambered like a minster cloud enwreatheMy soul, no more too deep, too full, for me.Hubert Church.
Chinese IvoryI think—a thousand years agoIn some dim, Chinese dwelling-placeOf ancient gods with smiling mouths,Smooth faces slit with almond eyes,And monstrous feet and folded hands,A wrinkled artist, bending lowOver the lucent ivory,Chiselled this melancholy faceWith agonizing patience, tillThe shadowed visions of the soul,The strange calm and the wild unrestWhich this deep musing gave to him,And that sad ecstasy of peaceHe knew when muted violinsPlayed 'neath the silver-weeping moon—Or his brief pangs of happinessAs when he saw the sighing windScatter a fountain's opal rainOver the thirsting lotus bloomsAt the pale ending of the day—And thoughts that lingered in his mindLike dreams remembered after sleepWere graven by his skilful handsInto this young god's weary face.Now in this grey-skied town of rainAnd storm-swept trees and pointed spiresWhere yet the cold stone dwellings lackThe ripening suns of centuriesHis beauty-tortured soul lives onImprisoned in this mournful faceOf aeon-mellowed ivory.For hidden in the placid smileHis resignation lies, and stillIn the down-gazing, mournful eyes,Unshed, there stand eternal tears.Toni McGrath.
The ThrushI heard a thrush in a bright tree,It sang with poignant ecstasy;It sang of English fields I've seenOft in my dreams, dew-pearled and green;Of primroses and daffodilsThat light the fragrant vales and hills;It sang of little dreaming townsTucked 'neath smooth, undulating downs;Of little cobbled streets that creep,Around about them, red and steep;It sang of houses small and thatchedWith open doors and gates unlatched;Of English hearths and fireside nooks,With shelves of well-thumbed, well-loved books;It sang of bells, insistent, sweet,That bring good folk on quiet feetTo church each peaceful Sabbath dayTo worship God in their own way;It sang of snow that softly lightsThe countryside on winter nights.So sweet and strange to me it seemed,Though long and often I have dreamedOf England—through a song-bird's powerReally to roam one lovely hourThrough English lanes, o'er English hillsLit up with golden daffodils.Ivy Gibbs.
The Round Pond at MidnightI love to think when the light failsAnd all the little ships, with folded sails,Are safe in port, and all the gayBay-captains and the pirate-kingsAre done with high adventuringsAnd gone their way—When the young moon, a pearly boat,A silver cockle-shell afloatIn the wide spaces of the night,Lays down a trembling path of lightOn the pale ripples of the tideless sea,And the woods stir with mystery,Swaying together, whispering secret thingsWith leafy sighs and hushed deep murmurings,When the dark pool is dark no more,But jewelled by the moon from shore to shore,A cup of crystal, round and tossing bright,Brimming with liquid flame and shimmering light-Ah! then! I love to think they comeTrooping along the forest ways,Pixies and elves and sprites and flying fays,Some with wings filmy-pale and someFloating in airy rings from tree to tree,Linked with their living garlands, wild with glee,Or running pell-mell, shining, unafraid,A mazy rout across a moonlit glade,With flying footsteps and with gem-bright eyes,With wild, sweet laughter and with elfin cries.* * * * *Down to the shining pool the shining routHas swept with many a silvery shout,And all are for the water now,Running their fairy shallops out,Some like a leaf with curling prow,Some pearled and painted like a shellRocking upon the gentle swell,With sails of beaten silver, fineAs a bee's wing and all ashineI' the moon. So, all night longThe fairy fleet sails far and freeTo the beat of an elfin minstrelsyAnd the sound of song,Till the dawn-winds wakeAnd the thin sails shakeAnd the pale mist creeps on the shining lake,And the merry tumult of shouts and criesAnd music and laughter fails and dies,And the lake lies loneTo the light of day.But whither are all the fairies flown?Away—away—Only under the forest eavesIs the ghostly scurry of fleeing leaves.Isabel Maud Peacocke.
InvocationWords dissolve in the blue,Trees are my thoughts.In the heart of the woodland is a time-old song,Its refrain I have lost on my wandering.I hear only a bird's call,The mountain-sigh of the lake.My mind runs down the glades, seekingThat song of long ago.But in a dream is a trusting-place,Deeper than the heart of the woodland,Over the rim of time-worn time,Come to me there through the swift trees,On your lips the rhythm.…A plumaged bird has touched your lips with flame,Translated you to the impenetrable mountainBeneath the crystal silence of its cataract.The fire of her lips dies on the mountain,The ash is scattered by an unrecording wind.A thousand autumns hide her trace,Nor may weave a spell of words to find it.P. W. Robertson.
GhostsAn old man's mind is like a haunted house;Creaking sometimes, and swaying in the gale,Full of strange phantom thoughts and half-formed wraiths,Old, half-forgotten friends, old spirits pale.Who drift therein in his warped memory,His sad, white muddled head a-nodding slowly,An old man's head is like a haunted house,Full of poor ghosts.… An old man's head is holy.Charles Stuart Perry.
I Would Have SongsI would have songs for the singing,Gold for the spending,White birds in blue skies winging,A long road seaward bending.I would have these and no other,And I would say to To-morrow,"To-day is my only brother,I have naught to borrow."S. August.
TreasuresThese things I love—A mountain etched against a sunset sky,Waves tied with silver ribbons of moonlight;Cloud galleons on fleecy wings aboveSlow sailing over;A wild bird's vespers when the drowsy landIs carpeted with dusk; red blooms and whiteOf tangled clover;Star-dappled streams, the feathered phalanx highWith night at hand.My treasures these.And, knowing them, comes no beatitudeOf spirit in the ordered works that makeA city, with its graven artistriesOf man's endeavour.For I have walked by wave-wet rocks, have seenThe rising sun his jewelled arrows shakeOn sun and river;Have known the glory of the waking woodWhen night has been.C. H. Winter.
InventoryLord, I have lived a lonely lifeAnd here I beNear heaven, I hope, and Thee.But oh! I'm loathTo leave these little earthly thingsTo bodies who'll not care.…There is my Jacobean chairThey say has seen the home of kings(But some say not). At any rateIt was my mother's, and she gave it me.My shining old piano.… All its stringsAre worn away with so much melody;But who will have it when I am not hereAnd polish its smooth surface?…By the grateThe little copper fire-dogs—but they are too dear—They leave a heart-ache. All my Dresden plate,That, I suppose, I'll give to small Annette:She will take care of it, I know. And yetI hate to think of others handling it.Lord, I'm a silly woman!—but I seeThings I have lived with twenty year and more…Stool of mahogany…The Chinese cabinet with the broken doorThat rocks so in an earthquake; and the spreadThat once a silly girl made for her bedA score of years ago.…Well, twenty years—and I am still a maidAnd loath to dieThough they say death brings peace.…But there's my bird with yellow, fluffy wings;And the wee stand of inlaid ivory.…I do not want to die!Lord, must I leave these things?Betty Knell.
DepressionMy mind is like a wretched room,So bare, so drear;Dull with a heavy, ugly gloom,No light, no cheer.My thoughts are like the beetles blackThat creep the floor,Scurry and hide in yawning crackIn wall and door.My feelings,—like the meagre lightMy candle gives,So faint, so fearful of the night,It scarcely lives.My outlook through a dingy pane—Distress and sin—Or if I turn around againTo look within—My room is but a sordid place—The paper torn,Nothing of beauty there, nor grace,All mean, forlorn.Marjory Nicholls.
Mountain NightI dwell content upon the plains by dayAnd see the mountains rise,With their snow-mantled crests like slender spiresAgainst the azure skies.Nor wish to climb their shining pinnaclesBy cliff and glacial height,But I am spent with envy when I watchThe mountains in the night.When Ruapehu speaks the Pleiades,And Taranaki hears a star-born croon,And Aorangi's gleaming brows are spannedBy a young sickle moon.Lilla Gormhuille McKay.
The Gipsy Girl and the MoonThe Moon and I a secret share!See how she goes, all delicate and rare,So slim and fair,On light white feetAcross the heavenly meadow highWhere bloom pale daisy stars.…With fingers long and brightShe parts the leavesAnd peers impatient through the tall, damp grasses;Again, she petulant throws downTreasure of silver and a silvern starBefore the silent woods to bribe their secret from them."Ah, forest kind, hides here my young Endymion?"But no: the trees but murmur sleepilyAnd shake their nestling heads,The rushes by the lake but bend and swayAnd lean to see her brightness in the mirror-pool,As she, poor hapless one, goes questing on her way,Forever seeking, seeking,Her young Endymion.Ah, poor wan little Moon,How do I knowAll your secret and your woe?White one, I too have my love Endymion…And I too shall soon go eagerly seekingThrough the knee-high bracken and over the stream,By the ghostly copse where the white owls hootI shall go to that brown little hut in the woodWhere dreams and waits my gipsy lover.Warm are his lips, and his grey eyes deep,And a stolen star lies drowned in each;His cheeks are as brown as the russet leaf,And smooth as a nut in the autumn weather,And his black hair sheens like a blackbird's feather,And ah! how his arms are strong!…His head shall lie between my arms,And close shall I hold him and weave a charmLest you, Moonlady, should passing see him,And steal from me, you with your long bright fingers,His heart so wild and his love so tender.…There, in the gloom where the pine-fire smoulders,He stirs and wakes. Ah, my gipsy lover!…Oh, you poor little sad white Moon!Rena Dillon Macintosh.
At the DoorAs I sit by my cottage doorAt evening of the day,And watch the young folks, two by two,Go down the lovers' way,And hear from old folks passing byThe things that old folks say,It whirrs and clacks, my spinning-wheel,And seems to mock at me,For I am wed to crooked JohnAnd he has gone to sea,And Spring winds stir the rebel thingThat is the heart of me.I know that in the coppice nowThe pale blue harebells swing,And every linnet in the woodIs singing of the Spring,And fain would I in the woodland ways,A maid, go lovering.C. A. Gordon-Cumming.
The HillFine fresh mornin'; a real Spring day; Alps a smother of snow,Sea like a jolly good laugh spread out mile upon mile below,Kowhai all yellow wi' blossom.… Nor'-east? Nor'-west it'll be, from here.…Ay!—Sharp and sudden, an' bitter as ever, yonder the Hill stands clear.…Nothin' to see! Nor there couldn't be anythin' now—only tongueless dust,Snug and deep down under the tussock.—Keep guard all the same I must!Never had nerve to revisit the place; nor I'll ever get nerve to quitHere, where I can have it before me, an' see an' make sure of it.Snow's the safest; in storms I'm easy; days o' the runnin' fire,I bother a bit—but it licks the crag, an' never creeps up no higher.Musterin' days—that's the terrible time!—Sickish I turn an' cold.…Men—an' dogs!—nosin' over and over … an' what if you up an' told?Well, you ain't gone back on me yet, old Hill! Nobody's ever knew,Only me, an' the stars an' sea, in the twenty year—an' you.Twenty year! an' only in rains (which I reckoned would help him rot),Bet you there ain't been more than ten minutes together when I've forgot.…Winter's evenin' an' wet: an' we'd swagged it twenty-five mile an' more,An' there was the lights at last, but far; an' he grizzled an' growled an' swore.An' I was cold, an' I was starvin', an' there, on top o' the Hill,He angered me so as I struck—By God! but I never meant to kill!—Here I came, for, wherever you turns, here's the view of It, up an' down,An' I'm near enough for the papers to tell if anythin's told in town.Here I've lived, way back in the Bush—dunno what the others think.They come, an' they go; but my whare's away by itself, an' I don't dare drink.Men as I've known 'ud ha' carried it off—married, an' started sheep.Couldn't,—just think o' the woman. … Besides, what if I talk asleep?Back in the whare there's none to hear, an' the wind it bellows and blows—Lord! it's lonesome and eerie enough—but it's safe, though. Nobody knows!In the dead o' night, arthe very hour, often I wake, an'—Hark!…Nothin'l only the dreadful sea, tellin' the dreadful dark;An' they terrible stars a-pointin' at me, witnessin', layin' bare—An' yet, there's a kind o' little relief that they know, like the Hill: they share.But I couldn't ha' done wi' lambs, I couldn't ha' stood the face of a child—There's little kiddies live hereabouts that pretty well drives me wild.When I have to pass by the schoolhouse door my eyes get sneakin' away;Turn o' themselves to their own place, there!—waitin' across the Bay.It's a rummy thing, how the Spring can start, an' the sun keep shinin' still,Year after year,—an' all the time, That laid up in the Hill.An' the stars go on, an' the sea goes on, an' the lambs can be born an' be.You'd ha' thought 'twould ha' changed the world.—It has: but only for him, an' me.Ay! him in the Hill, an' me outside,—we ain't very far apart;For the shade o' you shadows my eyes, old Hill, an' the weight o' you tears my heart.I struck but once; for twenty years you've held my neck to the knife.Whether you tell in the end or not,—ain't he had his "life for a life"?Was that a shake? … Thank God, it wasn't!Shakes turn me silly with fright,For then's your chance, if you've got a grudge, tospit him up into the light.Well, what if you did, eh? Whiles I fancy hangin' could be no worse.…Dunno if you been my best o' friends all the while, or my bitterest curse.Here's the way out, now—over the Point, where the sea-birds swing and dive;The Hill 'ud be hidden. … An' what do I get, anyway, by bein' alive?Jump over an' finish it!…Can't! I can't! I've never had pluck to tell.I haven't the pluck to hurry that smallest o' steps—from here to Hell.Well, some day it'll finish itself. I've written it all, so thenEverybody on earth'll know; but I shall ha' done with men.Poor old Jack, and his Maker to face … but—one bit o' the torment past:No Hill! —all, everythin', known, an' open, an' public at last!B. E. Baughan.
TrioletA kiss is something short and sweet,Which may be lengthened so discreetlyThat Love shall mock the prude's conceit,"A kiss is something short." And, Sweet—(Exferientia docet)—fleetIs youth; let's test the thing completely:A kiss is something short and sweetWhich may be lengthened—so! … Discreetly?Frank Morton.
EmbersLittle men with red caps delving in the embers,Looking for the lost flame that nobody remembers;Looking for the Yule log, looking for the laughter,Fearful of the grey ash soon to follow after.Youth is like the Yule log, middle life the embers,Age is but the ashes of a cycle of Decembers.Youth is like the Yule log, lit with merry laughter,Careless of the grey ash soon to follow after.Tick, tock, tick, tock, still the hours are flying,Twenty brave pixie men; twenty shovels plying.…Youth is like the Yule log, but middle age remembersLittle men with red caps delving in the embers.Winifred S. Tennant.
Garden PieceThe gate. And then I step on dewy grass,All greenly glad and waking as I pass,There at my side slim, spreading English treesQuiver with tender newness to the breeze;The netted arches in thin silhouette,The tasselled larches in sweet company set,Pink glows of flowering cherries, nodding ballsOf guelder roses, while on grim, green wallsBeyond them giant firs are sentinels.I feel the scent in tangled sweetness shedFrom daphne, hidden in a grassy bed;Wee, waxen heath stands straight; the bluegums' talk,Whisper and swish, comes to me in my walk;Among the creeping undergrowth below,Shy little hidden, smothered flowers grow,And as I cross the hedged and shadowy lawnThe thin ghost breeze slips by, and now the dawnComes in its chariot of cloud, sun-drawn.Alexa Stevens.
SydneyIn her grey majesty of ancient stoneShe queens it proudly, though the sun's caressHer piteous cheeks, ravished of bloom, confess,And her dark eyes his bridegroom-glance have known.Robed in her flowing parks, serene, alone,She fronts the East; and with the tropic stressHer smooth brow ripples into weariness;Yet hers the sea for footstool, and for throneA continent predestined. Round her trailsThe turbid squalor of her streets, and dimInto the dark heat-haze her domes flow up;Her long, lean fingers, with their grey old nailsGiving her thirsty lips to the cool brimOf the bronze beauty of her harbour's cup.Arthur H. Adams.
Bibliography
(These lists, which include poetical works only, are in some cases incomplete.)
Arthur H. Adams:Maoriland.Bulletin Co.1899. London Streets.Phillip Webley.1902. The Nazarene.Phillip Webley.1902.Bartlett Adamson:Twelve Sonnets.Whitcombe and Tombs.1918.S. August:Stewart Island Verses.Craft Press.1923.B. E. Baughan:Reuben.Constable.1903. Shingle Short.Whitcombe and Tombs, n.d.Poems from the Port Hills.Whitcombe and Tombs.1917.Boyce Bowden:Wellington Verses.Whitcombe and Tombs.1917. Roads and Fairies, Whitcombe and Tombs.1918.Hubert Church:The West Wind.Bulletin Co.1902. Poems.Whitcombe and Tombs.1904. Egmont.T. C. Lothian.1908. Poems.T. C. Lothian.1912.Eileen Duggan:Poems.New Zealand Tablet Co.1924. New Zealand Bird Songs.H. Tombs.1929.O. N. Gillespie:Night and Morning.Whitcombe and Tombs.1927. The Road to Muritai.Wright and Jacques.1922.Dick Harris:Poems.New Century Press.1927.Molly Howden:Green Violets.L. T. Watkins.1928.Robin Hyde:The Desolate Star.Sun Co.1929.Betty Knell:As the Story Goes.New Century Press.1929.Will Lawson:The Red West Road.Angus and Robertson.1903.Jessie Mackay:Land of the Morning.Whitcombe and Tombs.1910. Bride of the Rivers.Simpson and Williams.1922.Katherine Mansfield:Poems.Constable.1923.R. A. K. Mason:The Beggar.Whitcombe and Tombs.1924.Frank Morton:Laughter and Tears.New Zealand Times Co.1908. Verses for Marjorie.T. C. Lothian.1916.Alan Mulgan:The English of the Line.Whitcombe and Tombs, n.d.Isabel Maud Peacocke:Songs of the Happy Isles.Whitcombe and Tombs.1910.D. M. Ross:The Afterglow.Wilson and Horton.1905. Hearts of the Pure.T. C. Lothian.1911. Morning Red.Observer Co.1916. Stars in the Mist.Selwyn and Blount.1928.Marna Service:Blue Magic.Whitcombe and Tombs.1927.Arnold Wall:Blank Verse Lyrics.David Nutt.1900. London Lost.Whitcombe and Tombs.1924.
C. H. Winter:Poems.New Century Press.1929.David McKee Wright:An Irish Heart.Angus and Robertson.1918.
Index of AuthorsAdams, Arthur H., 168Adamson, Bartlett, 62-4August, S., 155Baughan, B. E., 162Beaglehole, J. C, 52-7Bowden, Boyce, 112-17Church, Hubert, 147Currie, Una, 57-61Duggan, Eileen, 1-14Fairburn, A. R. D., 34-40Fortune, R. F., 142Gibbs, Ivy, 150Gillespie, O. N., 14-24Gordon-Cumming, C. A., 161Grant, Alison, 40-51Harris, Dick, 119-22Heath, Mary, 146Henderson, Helena, 87-91Howden, Molly, 122-3Hyde, Robin, 74-82Kenny, Alice A., 117-19Knell, Betty, 156Lawson, Will, 130-4Macintosh, Rena Dillon, 159Mackay, Jessie, 103-8Mackenzie, Seaforth, 68-70Mansfield, Katherine, 24-33Marris, C. A., 140Mason, R. A. K., 99-100McGrath, Toni, 149McKay, Lilla Gormhuille, 159Morton, Frank, 166Mulgan, Alan, 108-12Nicholls, Marjory, 158Palmer, Eric Lee, 144Peacocke, Isabel Maud, 152Perry, Charles Stuart, 155Pope, Quentin, 92-6Poynter, M. H., 139-40Price, Doreen, 70-4Pumphrey, Mary, 141Riddell, Betty, 134-5Robertson, P. W., 154Ross, D. M., 124-5Schroder, J. H. E., 143Service, Marna, 101-3Stevens, Alexa, 167Sunley, S. M., 138-9Tennant, Winifred S., 166Tracy, Mona, 64-7Turner, Helen Glen, 96-9Veitch, Ishbel, 83-7Wall, Arnold, 136-8Winter, C. H., 156Withers, Ida, 129Wright, David McKee, 126-8