VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 20014, 30 October 1926, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. (Written for the Southland Times.) 51— LM. (Sir James Carroll) Part (conclusion.) And no one, it seems, can say the last word, Because there is so much to aay, And by so many people, And over so many centuries. So let the song rain down And sweeten all the country; But not by Pakeha lyrist alone Echoing his Keats or Shelley, And making our chief stand forth White like a Greek god; But find, also, the Maori poet With the folk rhythms of old-time And let him sing of a dark giant Who would free our people. Why should the dark past be silent When he has a hero to celebrate? And why should not one of the ancient bards Come back to earth again. And speak through a man of to-day? The hero and the poet, These are comrades who must link hands That both may walk with the gods. He that was a man who talked to us Is now become a presence everywhere, To be revered, to be thought about always. He shall be at every Maori gathering And shall loom ghost-like out of the night. Sometimes in the clear moon sky He shall stalk over the mountains, And stand, a myriad-coloured wraith On the far summit erf Mount Cook. How large these our islands are— Sweep of the Long White Cloud!— He walks across them in a stride. How small these islands are With all their heavenly glow!— He leaps out of the tiny growth of crepe fern And flits on to a needle-like stem Of the transparent swamp grass. How strange these islands are, With weird and mysterious relics Old as the rock, ancient like man!And, 10, he is a fantastic gnome, Tattooed from head to foot, Carrying a greenstone tiki. He crawls eerily out of a black cave In the crest of a flaming mountain Pushing his way through the flint. Might, tenderness and terror, are his» The prophet of our symbolic past., (And the part is always the future of men). As long as our blood remains—one drop even, He shaD not say farewell Southerner. hmraaA October