A GLIMPSE OF THE MORNING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 145, 21 June 1934, Page 20

A GLIMPSE OF THE MORNING.

AT THE GATES OF THE DAY. (By Bathia 11. It. But troll, ".Mnrocra," Waimanu, Bay o£ I'lcnty ; age 17.) The morning comes as a birthday on the earth—those pale, shaded hours, dappled with shadows of light and dark, that precede the rise of the sun. Tliey are hours filled with the spirit of futurity, pulsing gently with life that has not yet come into the light of day, moments so silent and restrained they seem to harbour suspicion, with the air soft as a pale wild rose. I caine out of the Valley of Sleep into the Land of Thought when a morning late in the summer season was being unvenled by wraiths of fairy mist drifting higher and higher from the landscape. till it uecame part of the- azure space. I stood in the cold, fresh dew and watched the light turn to jewels, myriads or dewdrops on fragments of cobweb along the hedge. A covey of native quail came out from a clump of pampas. They were like small models of Maori women, swathed in brown feathered rugs, their eyes bright and inquisitive, * peeping from beneath. Shortly after they had disappeared under another row of pampas grasses there came a foreign member of the quail family —a Californian. He came with a rustle that behoves his selfassurance, unlike the soft-footed little New Zcalanders which had preceded,him. His crest feather, black and white, nodded like an emperor's plume at a carnival.

"Caw-caw-caw!" he cried. Each "caw" in a quail's voice takes a higher note. "Caw-caw-caw!" I shouted in inimitable tones from my seclusion. "Caw-caw-caw." cried the quail fervently, but he traced the mockery in my voice when the conversation had gone a little way, and Hew in rapid flight over the pampas. Behind, the south lay, a map of silent acres, the wooded hills that faced the north were tipped with the suffused rose light in the sky, that blended softly into the dove-grey pallor of the whole. Just yet the west was but a valley of mist, and the light of a last star twinkled over the cast. I saw it shrink from a flame into a flaming point and vanish into the ethereal.

The gushes, trills, the sounding repetition of the water was music played by the hand of Nature. Alon> a low creek bank of blue clay was a clear trail made by the feet of sand pipers which had passed that way the night before. Rush and reed whispered . . . the sound coming, a quivering lilt through the silence, like a haunting memory of Pan's fairyaged melody. Ten thousand clovers bowed their heads into the pools of dew on their wide leaves; all around heliotrope and gold flowers stood, their petals closed, their beauty folded. In the east, where theS star liad faded, two strips of vermilion cloud were cast from the hills on cither side of the valley. They did not meet; a tip of blue hill rose between. These hills made a border on either side of the piece of coloured sky, like a pic Lure from Nature in its original frame, while below lay the painted meadows. It seemed as if the country lay under the spell of a magical hour. Further on the creek had swerved into a corner and created a pool, so still and reflective, it might have been another Psyche's mirror. Wild, innocent forget-me-nots, their tiny petals paler, than the blue in the sky, crowded about its edge and watched their liquid reflections. I sat here for a space and saw the cast vary its miraculous colours and the mist fade from the western valley like pale memories of phantom dreams. In a mass of twigs sat a kingfisher preening his feathers, which were deeper and richer than the blue sky above the white masses of cloud in the south. The spot seemed to have been fashioned as a dwelling place for civet* and dryads, pixies and all the fabled spirits of an ancient fairy tale. A hermit thrush carolled a sweet benediction, bellbirds were sowing the pure sweet air with notes of gold.

All at once the dawning became more apparent. The wild flowers unfolded their beauty, a glowing radiance iilled the east as though an unknown hand had turned up a great light there, aiul two growing, gold-stained rays of the eun rested across the blue liills, and down to the earth. . . . The gates of day were opening to the pilgrims of the eartli. TRY THIS OUT. If a man buys a pound's worth of penny stamps and sells them at 10 for a shilling, how much does he gain ? Most people will say 3/4 (making 2d in every l/) ; but that is not right. There are 240' pence in 20/, and selling the stamps at 10 for a 1/, lie received 24/, therefore gaining 4/.