An Old Australian Fisherman.

Through his brown hands the nets, like shadows, slip;
Black as the depths they float in. And each rip
The silver throated salmon made last night
Across the webs that held them choking tight,
In, yet apart from, their foam-dappled sea,
He mends with his thin mesh-stick, patiently.
Above the rack he bends, and never dreams
How rich the years have made him, though the gleams
Of vibrant wonder tread his brain in Spring,
When cape-weeds tread the world, and wildly fling
Their crooked golden pennies at the feet
Of bowing trees; but, soon these gleams retreat
In toil, until the calmer summer days Spin about Pelican a pulsing haze.
Then even as the seas’ cold fore-feet grind
Into the sand, so does his restless mind
Grind through the past, and searches for the few
Great hearted men that long ago he knew.
Then, memories of sun and wind and rain
And kangaroos that fled across the plain
Like broad red shadows, rise in him and fall;
And he remembers trees that mounted tall,
Into the Bega skies; and hears the harsh
Honk of the mountain duck across the marsh,
And anxious swans that speed beneath the moon,
Like singing arrows to their blue lagoon.
And things that he has touched, his hands remember,
On this sweet parching morning of November,
While with deep surgings, slow and indolent,
The water knocks his boat, as though it meant
To turn his mind to other thoughts than those
That lean within the morning like a rose
Of crimson in a jar of ivory.
He does not stir. He dreams about his sea,
And rain upon his roof, and wave-thinned oars
Thonged with dark leather, and the curving floors
Of boats that he has rowed, and the leaden seine,
Sweating with salt … until the tide again
Knocks at his side in swirling, mute demand.
Rolling the brown tobacco in his hand,
He masks its bitter richness with a coat Of paper white and turns his bobbing boat
Towards the little town that holds his worth,
This tall brown man, the very salt of earth.

—Eve Langley.

* * *

Auckland Cherries.

Two children climb the cherry tree—And what clear ringing cries are theirs,
When in the heavy leaves they see The black-hearts flash in earring pairs.
They loop those jewels, laugh at stains, They stop to drink the sudden view
Of Auckland; roofs and dwindling trains,
Then toss their locks and limbs anew.
So brilliant-black their eyes, so rich Their mouths from which red liquor drips,
One wonders in the leaf-light which Are cherries, which are eyes and lips.
And patient, wise, like a good mother, The tree withholds her secret, how
Cherries long vanished burned, and other
Children long vanished rode the bough.

—J. R. Hastings.

* * *

Transience.
Spring now is gone—so it's farewell To all our half-formed hopes, and dim, ecstatic dreams.
Farewell for ever to the straight spears of youth
And the green garlands.
The year ebbs on, and no more shall we see
These flowers, these suns,
Though there may rise in other greater heavens
Far brighter radiance.
These flowers are lost.
These jonquils have pressed up the earth,
Have seen the light, and died,
And in their place come roses,
And the wild coloured peonies,
And heavy scented lilies,
But no more and no more for us
Come the green and the white and the gold.
No more the young things, the wild things,
And the tender.
Never again these hopes, these dreams,
These quivering, trembling fears,
This sense of something hidden, half revealed,
This sound of Pan's faint piping,
This clear air.
This standing on the Rim of Time, This loveliness.
And we who stood upon the mountain top,
And viewed the stars with laughing, languorous eyes,
And held our arms out to the sun,
And we who ran, sure-footed down the mountain path,
And plucked with greedy hands the flowers that grew,
Have now but empty arms,
And feet that go but slowly,
And the year speeds on, While in her turn comes Spring again,
But our bright Spring—is gone.

—Isobel Andrews.

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