New Zealand Verse/The Four Queens (Maoriland)
LX.
The Four Queens (Maoriland).
WELLINGTON.
Here, where the surges of a world of seaBreak on our bastioned walls with league-long sweep,Four fair young queens their lonely splendour keep,Each in a city throned. The first is sheWhose face is arrogant with empery;Her throne from out the wounded hill-side steepIs rudely fashioned, and beneath her creepThe narrow streets; and, stretching broad and free,Like a green-waving meadow, lies the bay,With blossom-sails and flower-wavelets flecked.Elate she stands; her brown and wind-blown hairHaloes a face with virgin freshness fair,As she receives, exuberant, erect,The stubborn homage that her sisters pay.
Dunedin.
And one is fair and winsome, and her faceIs strung with winter’s kisses, and is yetWith winter’s tears of parting sorrow wet;And all her figure speaks of bonny grace.High on the circling hills her seat has place,Within a bower of the green bush set;And ’neath her feet the city slopes—a netOf broad-built streets and green-girt garden space.Above her high the suburbs climb to crownHer city’s battlements; and in her thrallLie sleeping fiords, and forests call her queen.About her waist she winds a belt of green,And on her gleaming city looking down,She hears the Siren South for ever call.
CHRISTCHURCH.
And one within a level city lies;To whose tree-shaded streets and squares succeedsA vista of white roads and bordering meads,Until each suburb in the great plain dies.The clustering spires to crown her fair head rise,And for a girdle round her form she leadsThe Avon, green with waving river-weedsAnd swept with swaying willows. And her eyesAre quiet with a student’s reverie;And in the hair that clouds her dreaming faceThere lurks the fragrance of some older place,And memories awake to die again,As, confident and careless, glad and sorrow-freeShe waits, queen of the margeless golden plain.
AUCKLAND.
Set all about with walls, the last fair queenOver a tropic city holds her sway;Her throne on sleeping Eden, whence through grayAnd red-strewn roads and gleaming gardens greenThe city wanders on, and seems to leanTo bathe her beauty in the cool, clear bay,That our past isle and islet winds its wayTo the wide ocean. In her hair a sheenOf sunlight lives; her face is sweetly pale—A queen who seems too young and maidenly,Her beauty all too delicate and frail,To hold a sway imperious. But forthFrom deep, dark eyes, that dreaming seem to be,There shine the strength and passion of the North.