Lonely Houses.

What do they dream of underneath the stars,
These lonely houses of the long-dead years?
To eyes of youth shabby and small and spent—
Homes of the pioneers.
Age of the rushing motor, flying ‘plane,
What can you know of space by footsteps won?
A bed of tussocks under star-strewn skies—
To rise and journey onward with the sun.
Yet within all these old and shabby walls
Linger the human dreams and hopes and fears
That pulsed in human hearts—to swell or die—
With the slow-passing years.M
High hopes, strong faith, that far from native lands
Built them a home upon this virgin soil;
Though dust the hands that built, these houses stand—
Battered and lone—mute tribute to their toil.
From the dead past wraith mem'ries linger there;
Was it the stirring wind alone that sighed
When, at the dark of night, the wild ducks call,
Where unseen wekas cried?
Rhythm of hoof-beats on the tussock flats,
Creaking of bullock wagons o'er the plain—
Youth speeding heeds them not—to those old frames,
(One with the past) clear echoes come again.
lEchoes of dreams—life become dreams alone—
Of days and nights when ocean waters rolled,
Grey of Atlantic to Pacific blue, New stars replacing old.
Music of running ropes and bellying sail,
Gulls and white wake behind—or dreams again,
Black dreams, when man-made craft with canvas furled,
Fought and won through the mighty hurricane.
New land, new life!—love, birth and death are there
Beneath the broken roof—some mother young
On that low step before the hingeless door,
Her babe to rest has sung.
Bracken and weed now pierce the rotted floor,
Empty the hearth that lit those early years—
Yet do they bravely stand, their joys to hold;
Those lonely houses of the pioneers.

—A. Bower Poynter.