NEW ZEALAND BIRD SONGS

Evening Star, Issue 20364, 21 December 1929, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND BIRD SONGS

A foV years ago a shy little book of verse, for those who had nob known ! her before, placed Miss Eileen Duggan in the front rank of New Zealand writers. The second sight of the poet and the singing quality were in every page of it. Now she gives us a book which onlv appears larger, because it is published in different form, and of its verses she says: “ do not pretend to be literature. _ They are simply rhymes on their birds for the children of our country.” Perhaps the suggestion is that they are too natural to be literature, but that distinction cannot be allowed. It is a difficult thing which Miss I ''uggan has done—to e-tch the spirit and the habits and very often the song of more than twenty of onr native birds, so that none 'of them could be mistaken for any other, and all are endeared. For some it had been attempted before, but never in a way which made them so living and real. Mr Johannes Andersen essayed to express the songs of different birds in musical notation, but that was an impossibility. Mr Arthur H. Adams, one of the_ best of, our poets, came to grief with his description of the tui. In a first version he described the bush, Whereo’er tho herald tni morning i gladdened, ; Lone on his chosen tree, With Ids new rapture maddened, Shouts incoherently. That seems to have struck him as a doubtful compliment to his friend, but the revision of later years is prosy stuff; For some the bush where, all its sadness scorning, The cassocked tni, his sleek coat adorning. High on Ids pulpit tree, Enraptured of the morning, Hymns liquid minstrelsy. Mis Duggan gets her bird and gets poetry: Would yon, remembering, tell them of the tui, Wild, wild, and blinding in his lightest note. They—they never heard him, swinging on a flax flower, Mad with the honey.and the noon in his throat. Here are the godwits—and art. What are yon doing, all flocked on Ileinga P What is your hurry—the trees are all gold? Sweeting, we gather because we must leave you. April is cold; April is cold! Oh! We shall miss you, my little kuaka; Where will you go then, my wild little one? Over the sea. to the country of Russia, Into the sun; into the sun. }.VeTI rest on the steppes and put on our red kirtles, Teaching our scared little children to fly. Then we stretch wing for the sea and the summer, Forth in July; forth in July. The description—in twelve lines—of the gannets on Cape Kidnappers could hardly ho surpassed. And if the weka could read he would see himself, as in a mirror, and turn “sidelong” with his “ wicked, sweet ” eye. ?,liss Duggan should be honoured by tho Birds Protection Society. Tho format of the little book is unusually artistic; it is printed as poetry ought to be. Harry H. Tombs, Ltd,, Wellington, publishers.