VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 20446, 26 March 1928, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. 132.—THE SOUTH. (After Wang Chien). (Written for the Southland Times.) The southern land is sweet with songs of birds, (Land of home call me back again). Its towns and villages are open to the road, And to its country markets with their herds, The wild tribes come and find a month’s abode. The straggling villages are built on marshy bpnka, (Home river, call me back again), And poisonous mists rise upward in the night, The damp sands bring disease to noblest ranks, And strange camp-fires mark many ft nomad's flight. Poor villages, so stricken and debased, (Starved province call me back again). The time will come when you will fail to please, Even now none passes, but a lone pearlfisher raised On his high craft, bound yearly to the far South Seas. —Southerner. Invercargill, March 26. Note.—Wang Chien in the only poet on record who so feelingly laments the decay of his own province. It is the attitude of mind diametrically opposed to "boost.” He realises he dwells tn a poor village in a ruined province; and considers an epitaph more in keeping than a paean. Chien is a realist.