VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 20013, 29 October 1926, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. (Writ ten for the Southland TimrsJ 50— 1. M. (Sir James CarroiL) Part V. Should the Pakeha take everything, Not only land and forest, But our national heritage as well? Everything from our sweetest melody, To our oldest, more poetic folk-tale? But who was the great poet of the Maoris To make our claim individual? He is nameless, he is not one man, But a thousand men and women Who have merged with the ages. And so, solidly, in a mass, We hold our own back from the Pakeba. Surely our poet is not Sir George Grey, (Whom we loved as a brother) ; . Nor is it Blanche E. Baugh an Who came to us from London; Nor Jessie Mackay, a Canterbury Ceil; Nor is it Alfred Hill, Australian, Who has captured something of us In his individual music. But the orator and vocalist Should be our interpreters, They can endeavour to express us In the only medium In which we have excelled; To sing and to speak is our element, We can sing and speak for ourselveri We have been called a dying race, But we do not die, never, We merge with the multitude, Assimilate our neighbours. And how can a race die out While it has one immortal to live by: Scotland its Burns, England ita Pitt, America its Abraham Lincoln, And we, our Sir James Carroll.— A great tree in a dense forest, A high mountain in a long range, Egregious, each forced upon us, ours! or yours And there is no glamour Like that which invests a hero’s grave, Because only dead men are listened to, And speak with final conviction, Not with phrases well-considered But with the sifted self in every sentence Coming out of the blind years, A last quintessence of pride. Soathemer. Invercargill, October 28.