VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 20010, 26 October 1926, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. (Written for the Southland Times.) 47.—1. M. (Sr James CarrolL) Part IL I have forgotten what you said, Not a single word remains to me, Not even a syllable; But I can remember the rhythm of your speech, The soft fall of your words like mountain water on mossy stones, A beautiful cadence Floating out from your dark face With a barbaric suavity. What was your sub jest? Something political I think, But each sentence was a song . Drowning every particle of thought, Every semblance of an idea, in melody. I thought of Paderewski at the piano Tapping the keyhoard into magic With temperament in every phrase; Of the only John Keats, melodist in words. Whose poems are without meaning, But burdened with fragrant beauty Like a summer garden on a lost island. Of the orator John Bright (So historians have tqld us) Who preached but taught no lesson, Stringing his epigrams for a rapt audience As a child threads daisies into a chain. What » art after all? How often Something that was never intended By the artist himself.—But always A reaching out of the spirit Into a region of glamour. And you, Sir James, with English words Transmitted into golden sounds Ou your rhythmic Pacific tongue Loomed up before me, mythical, A brave and ancient figure, Old as the tall Southern mountains, Poetic as the green Southern ocean, A veritable vocal genius Adding to English sentences The cry of the Maori race. Voicing in alien verbal music Its dreams, its age-old muse—• Mah>omene, of song and pain. October 24. ,