VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 18834, 29 May 1920, Page 4

VAGRANT VERSE

TO TUSITALA IN VAILIS4A, (Robert Louis Stevenson.) Clearest voice in Britain's chorus, Tusitala! Years, ago, years four-and-twenty, Gray the cloudland drifted o’er us, When these ears first heard you talking When these eyes first saw you smiling. Years of famine, years of plenty, Years of beckoning and beguiling, Years of yielding, shifting, baulking— When the good ship Clansman bore ui Pound the spits of Tobermory, Glens of Voulin like a vision, Crags of Knoidart, huge and hoary— We had laughed in light derision, Had they told us, tpid the daring Tusitala! What the years' pale hands were bringinr-** Years in stately, dim division. Now the skies are pure above you, Tusitala! Leathered trees how down to love you; Perfumed winds from shining waters f tir the sanguine-leaved hibiscus . . . Ah! but does your heart remember, Tusitala! Westward in our Scotch September, Blue agiunst the pale sun s ember—-• That low rim of faint long inlands, Barren granite-snouted nesses. Plunging in the <lulled Atlantic. Where beyond Tirce one pursers At (hr full tide, loud aim frantic? Vanished? ay, that's still the trouble, Tusitala! Though your tropic n-k? rejoices, ’Ti.; to us rn isle of .voices, 110110-.v like the elfin double Cry of disembodied echoes. Or an owlet’s; wicked laughtei. Or the cold and horned gecko’s Croaking from a ruined raft-T Voices these of things existing, Yet incessantly resisting Eyes and hands that follow aftei; You are circled, as by magic. In a surf-built palmy bubble, Tusitala; . . < For we hear you speak, like Moses, And we greet you back, enchanted, But reply’s no sooner granted, Than the rifted cloud-land closes. —Edmund Goss*.