Second Prize.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18946, 17 December 1929, Page 9 (Supplement)

Second Prize.

THE CITY FOUR-SQUARE. YESTERDAY. Here, once was heard a lonely melody, Where plains and hills lay in an ancient dream. Here tenuous tussock blades their slender theme Sang high and shrill, a Wind-whipped threnody. From rustling cabbage palm, a monody, A chant from winding raupo-bordered stream, From circled Rax. and toi-toi plume agleam, A chorus, dirge, and solemn psalmody. How far and soft the voice of calling bird, Of plaining gull, or gannet down the sky. Oh! Wondrous moment! When the plains first heard New voices —“ Haeremai!" and “ Haeremai!” An age-long silence, broken at a word. A cycle ended in that human cry. TO-DAY. Fire, spade, and plough, have changed the wild wide plain. Where brown earth upward turning, space by space Drove out wild plants (homes nestle in their place ) And stilled old songs of haunting mystic strain. Where pilgrims, once, reaped Reids of pleasant grain. Now, compass-wise, and built with stately grace A city stands, foursquare, and those who pace The foursquare city heart, by Christchurch fane Hear patt’ring, patt’ring feet for ever tread. Footsteps of fate! They beat a rhythm clear — “We pace a splendid highway through our land, An upward path to nobler years ahead!" A gracious vision! Like Saint John the seer, Who saw the Holy City foursquare stand. TO-MORROW. O clocks! O city bells! Your rhythmic beat Make pause! And hear a song of acrid mirth, A ceaseless dirge, unmarked, drifts through the girth Of bridge, and spire, and portal, bitter-sweet. “ I am song of the Rower that kissed the earth, The rich black earth beneath your feet, And whose dust is blown down the gleaming street. The song of the creatures who here had birth. “ Dim hoot of the moa, pukeko’s cry, Dirge of sou -west rain on the fronded fern, Dirge of moth, and of scarlet dragon-Ry — Of rimu, felled that hearth Rres may burn." A dirge? A menace! “ Did not grass grow high O’er Pompeii? We may return! Return!” CLAIRE BERNARD. Cheviot.