New Zealand Verse/A Leave-taking
XIII.
A Leave-taking.
The seamen shout once and together, The anchor breaks up from the ground,And the ship’s head swings to the weather, To the wind and the sea swings round: With a clamour the great sail steadies, In extreme of a storm scarce furled;Already a short wake eddies, And a furrow is cleft and curled To the right and left.
About me, light-hearted or aching, “Good-bye!” cry they all, taking hand—What hand do I find worth taking? What face as the face of the land?I will utter a farewell greater Than any of friends in ships—I will leave on the forehead of Nature The seal of a kiss—let the lips Of a song do this.
We part from the earth, from our mother, Her bosom of milk and of sleep,We deliver our lives to another, To cast them away or to keep.Many-mooded and merciless daughter, Uncertain, strange, dangerous sea,O tender and turbulent water! Make gentle thy strength, for in thee We put trust for a length.
Float out from the harbour and highland That hides all the region I know,Let me look a last time on the island Well seen from the sea to the snow.The lines of the ranges I follow, I travel the hills with my eyes,For I know where they make a deep hollow, A valley of grass and the rise Of streams clearer than glass.
O what am I leaving behind me? No sorrow with tears for its debt—No face that shall follow and find me— No friend to recall and regret—Thought shall raise up the ghosts of some faces, But not of the faces of men.A voice out of fair forest places Shall haunt me and call me, as when I dwelt by them all.
Now my days leave the soft silent byway, And clothed in a various sort,In iron or gold, on the highway New feet shall succeed, or stop short:Shod hard these may be, or made splendid, Fair and many, or evil and few,But the going of bare feet has ended, Of naked feet set in the new Meadow grass sweet and wet.
I will long for the ways of soft walking, Grown tired of the dust and the glare,And mute in the midst of much talking, Will pine for the silences rare;Streets of peril and speech full of malice Will recall me the pastures and peaceWhich gardened and guarded those valleys With grasses as high as the knees, Calm as high as the sky.
As the soul, were the body made regal, With pinions completed and light,Majestic and swift as yon seagull, Even now would I take a quick flight, And my spirit of singing deliver In the old hidden birthplace of song,Sitting fast by the rapid young river With trees overarched, by no strong Sun or moon ever parched.
A singing place fitter than vessel Cold winds draw away to the sea,Where many birds flutter and nestle And come near and wonder at me,Where the bell-bird sets solitudes ringing: Many times I have heard and thrown downMy lyre in despair of all singing; For things lovely what word is a crown Like the song of a bird?
That haunt is too far for me wingless, And the hills of it sink out of sight,Yet my thought were but broken and stringless, And the daylight of song were but night,If I could not at will a winged dream let Lift me and take me and setMe again by the trees and the streamlet; These leagues make a wide water, yet The whole world shall not hide.
For the island secure in my spirit At ease on its own ocean rides,And Memory, a ship sailing near it, Shall float in with favouring tides,Shall enter the harbours and land me To visit the gorges and heightsWhose aspects seemed once to command me, As queens by their charms command knights To achievements of arms.
And I will catch sight of their faces Through the dust of the lists and the din,In the sword-lit and perilous places— Yea, whether I lose or I win,I will look to them, all being over, Triumphant or trampled beneath,I will turn to the isle like a lover, To her evergreen brakes for a wreath, For a tear to her lakes.
The last of her now is a brightening Far fire in the forested hills,The breeze as the night nears is heightening, The cordage draws tighter and thrills,Like a horse that is spurred by the rider, The great vessel quivers and quails,And passes the billows beside her, The fair wind is strong in her sails, She is lifted along.
When the zone and the latitude changes A welcome of white cliffs shall be,I shall cease to be sad for white ranges Now lost in the night and the sea:—But dipped deep in their clear flowing rivers As a chalice my spirit shall weighWith fair water that flickers and shivers, Held up to the strong, steady ray, To the sunlight of song.