FINIS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2055, 13 July 1893, Page 39

FINIS.

For every human work there comes a day When he who wrought it sees it pass away Beyond his touch; and what he called his own— His own creation—henceforth stands alone, A thing to independent being grown. A song is written: through the listening nation Its music, weighted with a message, rolls, And, reaching many a coming generation-, Shall sing with never limit nor cessation Henceforward in a thousand thousand souls. And he who wrote it knows by no endeavour Can he add or take from word or note: Its grace endures; its faults shall perish never, And as it stands to-day it lives for ever, And travels down to centuries remote: For "Finis," stamped upon its page, Bhall sever The author from the song he sang for ever. A statue is unveiled, and daylight chases The curtained darkness from the sculptured stone, And, circling it in fond and clese embraces, In presence of a million upturned faces, Imperiously claims it for his own. And though unholy war in coming ages Within the statue's stony vision rages, It dwells untouched by human storm and stress, All fixed in monumental changelessness. And still shall live and last—a thing quiescent Above a land that wrath may tear asunder Within its atmosphere of rest: and under AJheaven always shifting, evanescent, That may be bright, or may be black with thunder, Whose every mood speeds by in change incessant. Between a restless earth and fickle sky It lives in statuesque serenity. And he who brought it into marble being, And sees it raised on pedestal, erect— A thing of his creation, his decreeing— Shall know today that in this very hour It slips with every beauty, each defect, Beyond his utmost reach: that all his power Can add no Bingle curve and none reject, For "Finis," branded on the stone, shall sever The sculptor from his handiwork for ever. A life is lived; and he is dead, the liver— The body stricken lies upon its bier, The soul, unbound, has sped unto its giver. And yet there passes, flowing like a river That has its source in acts committed here, The spirit of his life, with life unending, That pauses never, and is never still, To mix with other lives in ceaseless blending. So human works endure in all completeness, With all their dark and light and good and ill, With all their bitterness and all their sweetness, Beyond all power of altering or mending. And Death's stern "Finis" on each life shall S6V6r The workman from his works on earth for ever. June 1893. —Kate Addison.