KAI-WAI-WAI.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 253, 1 September 1879, Page 2

KAI-WAI-WAI.

To th Editor of the Wairakapa Daily. Sir, —ln these lines behold an ancient legend newly told, So shall your pensive fancy roam toward "my dear New Zealand home," Kai-wai-wai! Shall Yankee poet raise our scalps with terrors of the snow-clad Alps, and I not sing in turged ode, the perils of thy miry road, Kai-wai-wai! Tho'" spectral glacieis" may impart their terror to the stoutest heart, nor fell moraine, nor deep crevass, shall bear the palm from thy morass, Kai-wai-wai! The "awful avalanche" may hold the traveller in its icy fold,.but woe to human flesh and blood that seeks to penetrate thy mud, Kai-wai-wai! The youth who bore that banner strange o'er stern Helvetia's rugged range, braved not a doom more dread, more dire, than he who perished in thy mire, Kai-wai-wai! So take my tale: and may it wrest the sobs of pity from your breast, Tnen weep for him whose ill-starred lot has led him to that favored spot, Kai-wai-wai. The shades of night were falling fast as down line No. 1 there past, a youth who bore 'mid mire and mess, a missive with the strange address, Kai-wai-wai] His brow was smooth, you might descry no sign of verdure in his eye, and like the "Mor-pork's" tuneful note, came forth the whisper from his throat, Kai-wai-wai! In happy homes he saw the gleam of Scandinavian kerosene, above the moon's pale lantern shone, and from his lips escaped a tjroan Kai-wai-wai! " Try not the bush," the settler said, "close twine the' lawyers' overhead, the yawning drain is deep and wide," and thick a husky voice replied, Kai-waiwai! "Oh, stay," the Maori maiden said, "andiutheflax bushsharemy bed." Contracted was his bright blue eye, and still lie answered with a sigh, Kai-wai-wai ! " Beware the pine tree's withered boughs, beware the ruminating cow." This was the awagger'slast farewell; a voice replied, you go to, well—Kai-wai-wai! At break of day, oe'r creek anc. pool, as happy children skipped to school, and paused to pull the blossom rare, a voice cried thro' the startled air, Kai-wai-wai! A traveller, near their play ground, half buried in the mud was found, still grasping in his fond caress, that missive with the strange address, Kai-wai-wai! There, in the mud, bereft of sense, he lay beside the wire fence, and thro' the ether raw. and bleak, a voice came like a moor-hen's shriek, Kai-wai-wai!

The tale is told: A solemn hush falls on the meadows and the bush, the Poet's breast doth gently throb, and heaves the sympathetic sob, Kai-wai-wai! And, smiling cynic; would'sfc thou know, the dwelling place of human woe. Search nature's page and thou shall'st find a voice come howling down the wind, Kai-wai-wai! The birds that fly, the beasts that creep, the tenants of the awful deep, the billow of raging main shall all prolong the sad refrain, Kai-wai-wai! Andshould'st thou reach that sombre strand, where darkness lowers o'er the land; Oh ! heed the wretch's burning sigh, his endless and disparing cry, Kai-wai-wai! I can no more. Kai-wai-wai !!!