THE VOICE IN THE PINES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1551, 17 February 1874, Page 117

THE VOICE IN THE PINES.

The morn is softly beautiful and still, Its light fair clouds in pencilled gold and gray Pause motionless above the pine-grown bill, Where the pines, tranced as by a wizard's will, Uprise, as mute and motionless as they! Yea! mute and motionless; not one flickering spray Mashed into sunlight, nor a gaunt bough stirred; Yet, if wooed hence beneath these pines to stray, We catch a faint thin murmur far away, A bodiless voice, by grosser ears unheard. What voice is this 1 with low and solemn tone, Which, though all wings of all the winds seem furled, Nor even the zephyr's fairy flute is blown, Makes thus for ever its mysterious moan, From out the whispering pine-tops' shadowy world ? Ah, can it be the antique tales are true ? Doth some lone Dryad haunt the breezeless air, Fronting yon bright immitigable blue, And wildly breathing all her wild soul through That strange, unearthly music of despair ? Or, can it be that ages since, storm-tossed, And driv'n far inland from the roaring lea, Some baffled ocean-spirit, worn and lost. Here, through dry summer's dearth and winter's frost, Yearns for the sharp sweet kisses of the sea? Wkate'er the spell, I hearken and am dumb, Dream-touohed, and musing is the tranquil morn; All woodland sounds—the pheasant's gusty drum, The mock-bird's fugue, the droning insect's hum— Scarce heard for that weird, sorrowful voice forlorn. 7*l Beneath the drowsed sense, from deep to deep Of spiritual life, its mournful minor flows, Steam-like, with pensive tide, whose currents keep Low murmuring 'twixt the bounds of grief and sleep, Yet locked for aye from sleep's divine repose !