New Zealand Verse/Picton Harbour by Night
LIV.
Picton Harbour by Night.
Warm is the night and still; the misty cloudsObscure the moon so that there scarce is lightLeft in the world; all round, the silent hillsSleep mystically; and no night-haunting bird Startles the glooming trees with mournful cry.Silent the harbour sleeps, but myriad lightsSpread, phosphorescent, out from shore to shore—Ripples and streaks of fire that live and dieMoment by moment, till the waters seemLike to a sky of darkest purply-blueTurned upside down, and thick with silver stars.
Like silver phantoms round the weedy pilesOf the dim-lighted wharf the fishes passIn endless-seeming lines from right to left,Ever the one direction following. Far away,And faint with distance, through the moonless airThe steamers whistle sounds; anon her lightsShine, dim and misty, as she rounds the point,While answering lights glare out upon the wharf.She nearer comes—the water ’neath her bowsIs streaked with trembling lines of green and redAnd golden hues, that broad and broader growAs on she creeps, a larger-looming formWhose ever-throbbing engines beat and beat.
Now in her path the ghost-like silver fish With sound of quick and sudden little wavesRising and flapping on a sandy shore—Affrighted leap; then for a moment soundDies all away; and then breaks forth againIn throb of engines, shouts, and rattling chains,And hissing steam, as to the trembling wharfThe vessel is made fast. The flaring lampsFlicker and flame in the soft rainy air,And cast a glow upon the busy sceneOf loading and unloading; silence fliesInto the darkest hollows of the hills.
Clara Singer Poynter.