THE RAID OF THE WHITE MARAUDER

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 20

THE RAID OF THE WHITE MARAUDER

(By PhyllisjGurney Wright.) No wonder the earth is laughing, No wonder the earth is gay, For the trails of the White Marauder Are gone for another flay.

The sun on the sky's wide stairway Found in the early light The world in a deathly silence1, Loqked in a sheath of white. . '

But slowly the greens' responded, Drawn irom'ah.'icyijiwooh, ■•"

Freed from their frosty prisons To the warmth of a lovely noon.

And the forest is filled with laughter. From tree top :to tree trop'tossed : Is the tale of the White Marauder : And the weapons of war he lost.

For the trees stood high and watchful, While the sun .without a sound Turned the whole of them into water, And buried them underground.

The breeze is stay'd in forest ways, The rimus cease to sigh. The giant kauri towers aloft, And ivhispers to the sky. Kahikatea's slender trunk . No more creaks on its mate, While in its boughs wide-eyed morepprks ■ •• For purple gloom await. No more puriri's .leaves are stirred, Nor mho's fruited boughs, For Night has called the bush pigeon Into her quiet house. The breeze is stay'd in forest tvays; The- forest- spirit sleeps; While through the night the morepork guard Each lonely vigil keeps. —ADELINE WALLER. Auckland.