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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 2, No. 2 March 15, 1939

Immortality

Immortality

Must then the living water be stripped from the rock,
the cool, the living water,
tinkling like laughter Into pools?

Is there nothing but the hot, bare rock
livid in the blistering sun
with no shade?

See! The veiled spray is cagerly clutched
by the slim fingers of the hot winds
(mocking, burning wind)
drifts, fades like starlight, and dissolves.

I am afraid of the great gaunt rock
and the breath blown back from the crags,
and there is no shelter from the black sun,
and no water,
no water to ease my searing thirst,
and nothing seems worth the doing.

There Is only the fearful rock,
smooth, imperturbable,
and the flaming breath of the flying winds.

—R.L.M.