A PLEA FOR THE PASTORAL

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue VI, 10 February 1894, Page 128

A PLEA FOR THE PASTORAL

Now take thy lyre, the people cried, And sing a realistic rhyme ; Show us Man’s lower, baser side, And break the folly that would hide The picture of our social crime. The poet answered, Slender hours Yield me but insufficient time To pluck the garden of its flowers. And while such beauty still is ours Why would ye I should search the slime ? The people answered, Doth the rose Bloom in the city where we dwell ’ We know not where the daisy grows, Or where thy vaunted streamlet flows, Or where thy heaven obscures our hell. The poet rose : Then let me sing A song that bears the highest art, And to your meanest alley bring The scent of flowers, the breath of Spring, Aud rays of sunshine to the heart. The people laughed and turned away : The poet sought the mountainside, And where the sunbeams loved to stray, He sang bis uncomplaining lay, And, singing to his flow’rs, be died.