LAND LOVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2663, 29 March 1905, Page 63

LAND LOVE.

How fair a land must be to waken song

Whose notes are pure and from the bosom flow - Like mountain rivulets that flood along

To where the torrent waits for them below. No words have I to speak of thee save these, The beating of a singer's breast, whilst thou Hast power to waken Love upon the breeze Or voice the storm upon the mountains' brow. How grand the task of mountaineers that climb To altitudes where mountain spirit? dwell,

Above the land in loneliness sublime, And feel the power of that impassioned spell That draws the sotil to its Creator near, Soaring aloft in clear untrammelled flight; To have a task like this is surely dear — To boast like this of freedom is delight. How great a land must be to waken love ; How blissful the nativity must be V>"here, hemmed by ranges wreathed in clouds

above, Men stand erect and feel that they are free. By right of birth, dear land, I call thee mine; The humblest of thy happy children I, Content to be o'erwhelrned by the sublime Land love that lifts the humblest soul on high.

How dear a land must be whose self-esteem

Can waken from its inwardness the thought That lies within the beating breast a-dream,

Till, like a very dream, it comes unsought ; So dream we on these shores of thine, dear land. So shall the power of dreaming cease, and then Thy peaks shall be our resting-place and grand Our souls with mountain songs shall be. Amen.

— J. Maclenkan,

Invercargill, March, 1905,