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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 3 (June 1, 1937)

Waikouaiti

Waikouaiti.

Oh, there is healing in the sun's caress
And reconciliation in the breeze
That doth salute the pilgrim from the stress
Of that usurping town where Scotland sees
Herself in miniature. It was your ways
O dreaming Waikouaiti, now grass-grown
That in the minds of men in former days
Were teeming thoroughfares. The plan has flown
E'en as the white terns fly by marsh and sea.
Shall I regret that dream which came not true?
Is there not there conjunction sympathy
With English dreams? Dark as the English yews
Are yonder pine-crests that in concert sigh
About God's acre compassing quite close
The wooden church. Here might a dreamer lie
And in the resinous calm his mind engross
With images of home from seared leaves culled
While to his ears the rumour of a race
That knew not England loiters in the call
Of some far tui. Yet his heart is lulled
By sound of English throstles that install
A very England in that hallowed place.
There was a thin white road that always seemed
To beckon towards the ocean
To promise strange renewal, where of yore
A listener read an English poet, and dreamed
He heard the children play upon the shore.

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