New Zealand Verse/From "Ranolf and Amohia"
XVI.
From “Ranolf and Amohia.”
It was a wondrous realm beguiledOur youth amid its charms to roam;O’er scenes more fair, serenely wild,Not often summer’s glory smiled;When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright,No alabaster half so white—Hung lightly in a luminous domeOf sapphire—seemed to float and sleepFar in the front of its blue steep;And almost awful, none the lessFor its liquescent loveliness,Behind them sunk—just o’er the hillThe deep abyss, profound and still—The so immediate Infinite;That yet emerged, the same, it seemedIn hue divine and melting balm,In many a lake whose crystal calmUncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;Where sky above and lake belowWould like one sphere of azure show,Save for the circling belt alone,The softly-painted purple zoneOf mountains—bathed where nearer seenIn sunny tints of sober green,With velvet dark of woods between,All glossy glooms and shifting sheen;While here and there, some peak of snowWould o’er their tenderer violet lean.
And yet within this region, fairWith wealth of waving woods—these glades And glens and lustre-smitten shades,Where trees of tropic beauty rareWith graceful spread and ample swellUprose—and that strange asphodelOn tufts of stiff green bayonet-blades,Great bunches of white bloom upbore,Like blocks of sea washed madrepore,That steeped the noon in fragrance wide,Till by the exceeding sweet opprestThe stately tree-fern leaned asideFor languor, with its starry crownOf radiating fretted fans,And proudly-springing beauteous crestOf shoots all brown with glistening down,Curved like the lyre-bird’s tail half-spread,Or necks opposed of wrangling swans,Red bill to bill—black breast to breast,Ay! in this realm of seeming rest,What sights you meet and sounds of dread!Calcareous caldrons, deep and largeWith geysers hissing to their marge;Sulphureous fumes that spout and blow;Columns and cones of boiling snow;And sable lazy-bubbling poolsOf sputtering mud that never cools;With jets of steam through narrow ventsUproaring, maddening to the sky,Like cannon-mouths that shoot on highIn unremitting loud dischargeTheir inexhaustible contents;While oft beneath the trembling groundRumbles a drear persistent soundLike ponderous engines infinite, workingAt some tremendous task below!—Such are the signs and symptoms—lurkingOr launching forth in dread display— Of hidden fires, internal strife,Amid that leafy, lush arrayOf rank luxuriant verdurous life:Glad haunts above where blissful loveMight revel, rove, enraptured dwell;But through them pierce such tokens fierceOf rage beneath and frenzies fell;As if, to quench and stifle it,Green Paradise were flung o’er Hell—Flung fresh with all her bowers close-knit,Her dewy vales and dimpled streams;Yet could not so its fury quellBut that the old red realm accurstWould still recalcitrate, rebel,Still struggle upward and outburstIn scalding fumes, sulphureous steams.It struck you as you paused to traceThe sunny scenery’s strange extremes,As if in some divinest face,All heavenly smiles, angelic grace,Your eye at times discerned, despiteSweet looks with innocence elate,Some wan wild spasm of blank affright,Or demon scowl of pent-up hate;Or some convulsive writhe confest,For all that bloom of beauty bright,An anguish not to be represt.You look—a moment bask in, blessIts laughing light of happiness;But look again—what startling throesAnd fiery pangs of fierce distressThe lovely lineaments disclose—How o’er the fascinating features flitThe genuine passions of the nether pit!