Haste to the Quickening Years

Haste to the quickening years, haste
As the doe darts to the cooling stream.
When the sun descends, list and do not dream
Away the flowing hours of life, each one a pearl
Earned at a bitter price; leap to the call of time
And round upon the chains that thwart our climb.

We are a precious burden, fashioned out of love
And moulded in the likeness of a Greatness;
For each arising can tear away the trammelling tresses
That coil-like keep us crawling on this earth
Low-bellied and morosely as the dingy snake
Writhes its way to some poor prey, asleep, awake.

We are a lake mirrored with love eternal
That bears the ragged seasons, the bitterness and storm,
And yet remains the same, though all the dawn
Rages with the glow of a gale-drenched turbulence.
We are the shadows creeping, surging out of gloom
Weaving a flying pattern like the shuttle on the loom.

We are the happy laughter, the clangour of great bells,
The pride of hope requited and the dreadfulness of years
All spent and gone amidst the counting of the tears.
This is life, the joy and pain and misery and ending,
For it all ends and all things have some closing
When the door shuts and terminates our posing.

We stand abreast the gate of time and stem the flood
With bitter beatings, striving our puny hands
To grasp the wheel of things and bind the bands
Until we are and there is no more becoming;
But as a sorrowing bird lamenting seeks its young
We find no rest until a nightfall stills our tongue.

We are the forest swathed, and rent by flame,
Gnarled, desolate and forsaken 'neath a sky that broods
Where the great clouds weep upon the blackened roods,
'Til time comes racing in with startled greenness
And the tail trees sleep forgotten and the new
Cascade up to heaven in the glory of their dew.

Praise be to God for men who love His Goodness
And lift their hearts to sec beyond this mime,
Across the stars that are the shield of time;
This makes us mortal and immortally sublime.
For we are the trumpets ringing, singing a song unheard
The promised sons of Heaven, free as the wheeling birds.

A.A.N.

Wotapiti

Frank stood alone upon Raumati's shore
Seeking inspiration.
The stars and moon shone bright, but all he saw
Was Kapiti.
That one by such a sight should be inspired
Seems most ridiculous.
Perhaps our bright young bard was over-tired—
Or just shikered.
If Frankkie had but stood there on a day
Unaccountably fine,
And then, by chance, had looked the other way—
Oh! What rapture!
Unchecked would be the cry from out his mouth,
"Oh, Te Waipounamu!
Magic Jewel, Emerald of the South!
Mighty Mainland! !"

—J. G. Hutchison.

The Sand

They took sand in their hands
To let it run grain dry
And dusty to the unthered ground as
From a blanket burdened sky
There came the wind to snatch it
From their grasp. They saw it fly
Before them and they walked
Upon the motes that fell
Beneath their heels; thus crtished
To new white form and well
Destroyed, the single shapes released
The multi-common spell
That for a moment had been theirs.
So the men passed on while the sand forgot
The life it once had shared.

—F. L. Curtin.

Journey for Two

Here is the footpath, here is the street
That bears the weight of our four flat feet;
At the end of the road of civilisation,
There we walk, the dregs of a nation.
Dregs of a culture, too, of a race,
With no one left to lift its face.
Eager once, it slouches, sighs,
And sniffs at the crows' feet round its eyes.
But we shan't care, we shan't stop
To observe the soft and sinewy rot
That eats away the firm round flesh,
And leaves a subtly ageing mesh
Of sagging skin, reveals the frame
Of grey gristle, dead in all but name.
O, rub the frantic skin food in,
Breathe a halitosic prayer,
O, set the rapidly receding chin,
And let us carry on!

—R.E.H.