Reclamation.

Here was a wilderness where her fair flowers grow,
Here grew the raupo where her iris blow;
Here in the swamp came the wild fowl feeding,
Where little mother kneels to her endless weeding.
Here in the night came the weka calling,
Now in the dusk pink petals falling
To fresh-ploughed earth, and their almond breath
Weeps with the willow for the old swamp's death.
Low to the water came the wild cat creeping—
And the cherry tree to the wind is weeping—
Here came the wild hare to its gentle playing,
Where on the wall is the trained vine swaying.
Swaying where the toi toi and the couch grass twined,
Where the lilies and the concrete paths go straightly lined;
Carnation and hyacinth and ivory white,
With geranium and lilac stain the cold moonlight.
Here in the peace the wind has stayed it's crying
For the wild past that was so long in dying;
From the low fields the banked mists come creeping—
But the spent tree cannot cease from weeping—
Under the cherry tree the little ghosts lie sleeping.

M. Lynn Gurney.

* * *