POETRY ANO ROMANCE IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue II, 13 July 1895, Page 32

POETRY ANO ROMANCE IN NEW ZEALAND.

(BY

THE WARRIGAL.)

I SAW quite recently a portion of a poem by Mary Colborne Veel quoted in the Review oj Reviews. It was part of ‘ A Colonial Poet's Lament,’ which is to be found in the volume lately published by this talented young authoress. The quotation begins

‘ Woe is me for a poet forlorn In this loveless new land to be b)rn Kre the flo werets of fancy have blown I shall perish in silence unknown.'

In these words Miss Veel voices the lament of the colonial poet, and I am sure that the poet who mourns because he is born in this ‘loveless’ (?) new land must be a lamentable object. This lamenter has evidently sent some of his poems to some old-world singers and has asked them for an opinion. He gets it—-

• Then they vt ho feit crowned with the crown Of deatnieas accomplished renown. The great * iih coinpast i >n to heed Their very young brethren's need.’

say definitely, and perhaps cruelly, ‘O, faint-hearted scribbler, no more.’ Many other lamenting poets have received the same advice ; but unfortunately they have rarely acted on it. But this is not the main point. The Colonial poet, the lamenting one, says—-

‘ On colonial inglorious ground No theme for romance can be found,’

And this is the statement to which I wish to object. Miss Veil objects to it, for she says, ‘ There is UJe, there is love, there is death,’ and she bids the lamenting poet—-

* Unlock with your magical keys Tho meaning that sanctities these. And the Old World and New shall proclaim Your right to the coveted fame.’

Miss Veil’s advice is good. If any poet, colonial or British, can find anything good and new to say on these three subjects he need not ‘ perish in silence unknown.’ There is life, there is love, there is death in New Zealand with all their tragedy, with strange backgrounds and new features. But that statement, ‘On colonial inglorious ground no theme for romance can be found,’ rouses me as a lover of this grand new country to contradiction. ‘ 0/4 colon al inglorious ground no theme for romance can be found!’ Ido not care who makes this statement, it is wrong, wrong, WRONG. This land is rich in romance, a veritable treasure-house of poetry. I remember Miss Veel writing some very pretty lines which told of ‘ whispering reeds,’etc. Now there is poetry and character even in reeds. The colonial poet need not lament if he can give the mystery of the raupo thickets that fringe Waikato lakes ; the wilderness of stately fronds waving above the desolate shores, their music, their weird beauty under crimson sunsets. Reeds 1 Who has shown us anything of our kakahoa—the flowering reed of the toitoi waving its feathery crest by our clear swift streams ? And bigger subjects for poets—the grandeur of our mountain gorges, the strength of the great snow rivers, the mystery of our untrodden mountains, the solitude of our dense forests, the wonders of forest vegetation, the fierceness of nor’-west storms—the thousands of subjects.

The poet, colonial or English, may declare that there is no ‘ romance ’ in these things. There is poetry, at any rate ; beauty wondrously new. But romance ! Do you see no romance in this country, O faint-hearted scribblers? If not, then take the advice in Miss Veel’s poem and ‘ no more ’ scribble, no more, but lament the more, for you are a poor blind creature unfit to be heard. There is romance in this country, splendid romance, fit for any poet to sing. I say little of the riches of Maori lore ; the deeds of great warriors ; the lovesand hates of chieftains; of tribal hates and blood feuds ; of wars, invasions, conquests, midnight attacks, desperate rallies—material almost as rich as Homer built with nor do I urge the legends and superstitions of the same people. ‘ Faint-hearted scribblers ’ might say these Maoris were but savage people, forgetting that some of the grandest poems are of a people as savage. But there is colonial romance, the romance of wandering and adventure, the poetry of the virgin wilderness, the battle of man with nature. John Grigg’s subjection of the Longbeach swamp holds material romantic as an ancient battle ; the work of the old pioneers—their daring, their endurance ; the search of settlement, the growth of civilization, the birth of a new nationromance enough, but where is the poet to sing ? There is romance in the traction-engine drawing a load of wool from an up country station ; romance in the sowing of grass where forests once stood ; romance in the shepherd’s life way back in the mountains; in the gumdigger's life, whether he digs among trunks of ancient trees lying deep in swamps, spears on the manuka-clad hills by lovely harbours, or climbs the stately kauris in deep forests.

Romance ! English people love the romance of the sea. Is there no romance in New Zealand seas ? Who

shall sing for us the glories of the Southern fiords — fathomless depths shadowed by measureless heights ; thunderous waterfalls, mighty cliffs, gloomy pools, mountains, crags, and bowers of dainty graceful ferns. The history of those fiords —have they no histories, ‘ O scribbler ?’ Can you not see daring old Cook, tired with long voyaging in search of a mystic southern continent, entering Dusky Sound, and the ships which came after him, the Britannia leaving John Luth and his party in that awful solitude to months of toil and haraship ? Why, their building of a ship, every plank cut out of a single tree, is a poem. The coming of the Endeavour and the Frances, the latter the first vessel built of New Zealand woods, another subject for a poem ; the discovery of other fiords.

And then the romance of the seas to the southward. What poems there ! The hunting of whales—fit sport for Vikings; Homeric combats with the greatest of earth’s creatures, the stormy Antarctic for an ampitheatre; life on desolate islands ; wrecks on the Aucklands ; famine, noble endurance, noble enterprise ; isolation on the spray-swept Solanders; months of exposure on the rocky Bounties ; wreck on the Antipodes only months ago; a wondrous story. A thousand subjects for romance. Material for a thousand poems with scenery and conditions such as have never been used by poets. ‘O, faint-hearted scribblers, no more,’ if you cannot see romance in such things and hear music in the roar of south-west gales and the crash of black waves. An! in the North, seas lovelier than the Adriatic sleeping under skies of perpetual summer ; harbours, beautiful as parad ; se ; inland seas, island studded ; golden beaches ; beaches of jet black sand ; sunsets seen through clouds of West Coast spray ; musical winds making organ pipes of carved cliffs ; the rippling of warm waves on beaches of shells ; castles and crags of limestone. Who will sing us of our seas when they dash in mad fury against onr mountain shores, when they thrash against banks of hissing shingle, where they sleep through long balmy days ?’ ‘O, faint hearted scribbler,’ can you not see there romance and poetry ? There is romance in gold digging in that wild West Coast ; the invasion of the mountainous country ; the breaking through trackless forests; the discovery of wondrous riches; the mad excitement the turns of fortune ; the wild deeds, the tragic deaths ; the awfulness of grand gorges ; the sombre beauty of hanging forests ; the icy peaks of a world of mountains. Who can know this country without feeling the romance and poetry of it

The growth of new thought here, the freedom, the breadth of life. ‘O, faint-hearted scribbler, no more ’if you cannot sing such subjects as these Send your meandering verses to Europe where the measurement of metre is of more importance than the sense of your subject and lament, O lament, for you are very blind. But this statement,

'On co’/ nial inglorious ground No theme for romance can be found.

is frequently made, widely believed. Have you no pride of country, you young New Zealanders? You sons of pioneers, of nation-builders? Will you not rise and object to this statement ? You are learned in Grecian poetry, Roman warfare, English history. Do you know nothing, care nothing for the poetry and welfare and history of your own country ? If you see nothing of romance in New Zealand be silent for shame’s sake. If you see its romance show what you see for love of country.