GOLDEN PROMISE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21296, 24 September 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

GOLDEN PROMISE

EY ELSIE K. MORTON

THE TASK AND THE REWARD

Tile strong winds liatl c-omc, boisterous and "buffeting, all too strong for beautiful, fragile Spring. For a few days the early plum tree had been canopied with bloom; in a single night its frail beauty vanished, and white petals lay thick, like minute snowflakes, on the blue carpet of forget-me-not. So swift are the footsteps of Spring, so transient her beauty! On a morning last week, grey with misty rain,i I saw the last petals drifting down just before I set out on a short journey. Already, it seemed, Spring was leaving us, her promise only half fulfilled. The harbour was dim and grey as we sped down the waterfront railway; the water in Hobson Bay was dull silver, with swirling ripples around the embankment as the tide rushed in to the foot of the cliffs. Suddenly the leaden sky was cut with a white cross—another and another—with pillars and monuments, and we were speeding through the City of Ilest. llow quiet and still, how remote from the world of men, that hallowed garden of Purewa! How tranquil and undreaming the sleep of those who lay at rest! How many a glorious spring had gladdened their eyes, how many a task those quietly folded hands had done at the bidding of tho Gardener who gathers all men in at tho last to the garden of beauty immortal! Here slept the men and women who had built our city as we know it to-day ; not the pioneers of early Auckland, but their sons and daughters, the men who built up its industries, who established the professions, and built the homes, the mothers and fathers of those who now hold our city's, destiny,in their hands. How they had toiled, remembering the privations and hardships of their early years, determined to leave to their sons and daughters a heritage worth the holding. Within the borders of that hallowed garden lay many who had been called away before their work was finished; others had laid it down in quiet content. Ready or unready, willing or unwilling, the thread of which is woven the fabric of national life had passed from their hands. Springtime Glory

And then suddenly there was a dazzlo of gold against the sky, pure gold, sharp and bright as tongues of flame against the grey sky. Gold of spring, cloth of gold, of flowering gorse all over the hills, goldenbanners unfurled on the high embankment, golden spurs pricking the dull clay walls, rivers of gold flowing down into every rift and valley. The Golden Promise! No longer a menace, a curse upon the face of the land, but a golden glory laid by spring on the barren and unbeautiful waste places, like the lovely gleams of pure joy that shine through rifts in the clouds of the dullest, greyest life. Beyond the darkness of the tunnel lay the splendid pasture and garden lands of Tamaki and Panmure, green as powdered emerald in the rain-misty morning. Cutting across the vivid green ran tho long grey lines of the stone walls built by the soldiers half a-century ago after the Maori War. What a gigantic task was theirs, how rough and harsh the years of toil, the handling and placing of those millions upon millions of stones that have gone to the making of the walls that run north,and south for over a hundred miles through the Auckland countryside! ]^ T ot a speck of mortar or cement, just the rough stones, yet so beautifully matched, so truly and evenly laid, that these old, lichon-covered walls still stand as a monumeut to the patience and industry of men who knew the meaning of primitive toil as few know it today.

Again the task, again the reward. The builders may not have lived to see it, but there it stands to-day, the waste places •turned into countryside rich and beautiful, its lands, for generations the fightingground and deeply-coveted prize of a warring race, now a picture of peace and plenty. Through the Waikato And so wo passed presently into the farm-lands of the Waikato, and everywhere the brightness and beauty of spring lay like a golden dream upon the face of the earth. Already the rain had freshened the pastures to brighter emerald; like a pink cloud lay the bloom of peach orchards beyond the green rain of the willows; cattle and sheep stood fat and well content in the rich pastures. Orchards, flower gardens and vegetable gardens—everywhere earth yielding of its fullness for the use and benefit of man, and gentle spring rain falling, still further to replenish and restore! And yet men had dared to talk of disaster for a country such as this, endowed by nature through the hand of a bounteous Creator with all good things needful for the body and soul of mankind !

Depression—with the bugles of spring sounding through the land! Even so they sounded eighteen years ago, in another springtide as golden and beautiful as this, and in that lovely spring the young manhood of New Zealand laid heart and hand to the darkest, direst task of all, the (ask of war. The bugles sounded all through the season of springtime gold—springsong and battle-call—and then they went away to complete their task. " If Ye Faint Not "Complete!" The word has a strange, sad note for us to-day. They laid down the task, .rather let us say, for the world to complete, a charge upon the whole of mankind. And a wonderful job we have made of it! Year by year we have awaited the fulfilment of the high hopes of that better world promised " after the war." Always it was " after the war." And then the time was here; the dark clouds had vanished, and we waited for the incoming of that era of peace toward which all hearts and hopes had turned with wistful longing. All over the world to-day, men and women are working still for peace, even as darkly, secretly, urgently, the hidden forces of evil are working once again for death and destruction. Millions of women in every country on earth signed a Peace Petition, ond it was forwarded to the arbiters of the nations' destinies at Geneva. What happened to it \ What has been the harvest of all the years of toil, smoothing out the rough places, and healing of the wounds of war '! If it were not for the eternal pro-

mise, the hope that " good wilt .somehow be the final goal of ill," how easy it would be to give up in utter despair of mankind ever bringing order out of confusion, of emerging from the hideous clouds of intrigue, greed, mistrust, lust for power, that are hiding the glory of God from His world to-dav!

But toil must inevitably bring reward, if the hands that serve be clean and strong, and the work done in the spirit of true service. There is :t verse in Kipling's " Glory of a Garden that each one of us might- well remember: ... and (Jod who liifido liim scos That half n proper gardener's work is done upon his knees. " Upon his knees" . . . That is how all true service is performed, the same in the garden of life as in the garden of flowers. And to each and every true gardener is the promise and the reward . . . the promise of spring, the promise of life itself: ":u due season ye shall reap, if ye. faint not."