New Zealand Verse/The Whare

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XLI.

The Whare.

It stands upon the grassy slope, A ruin, brown and lone:The door swings on its hinge of rope With strange and dismal tone,Whene’er the wandering winds that passBear with them, o’er the thistled grass, The darksome forest’s moan.
Lone seems it when on all around The summer moon lies still;When not a zephyr stirs to sound The rata on the hill:When but the locust on the treeAdds to the murmur of the bee Its tuneless note and shrill.
Here, mouldering walls stand rent and dark, Once wind-and-weather proof;There, strips of brown manuka-bark Drop from the tattered roof;And wandering cattle, wild as wind,Upon the sward have left behind The print of many a hoof.
No more, when with its burden black Low broods the winter night,Shall shine through every chimney-crack The back-log’s yellow light.The bushman’s tiring task is done;And stumps, that rot in rain and sun, Stand bleached to spectral white.
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Lone whare, on the green hill-side, From human haunts apart,Unnoticed by the eye of Pride, A hallowed spot thou art.This roof, that ever inward falls,This shattered door, these mouldering walls, Once held a human heart.

H. L. Twisleton.

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