Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/117
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The Ships.
81
Its speech is of the willow-reaches rich with lurking joy;The revel of the rapids where gay life is death’s decoy:My heart is with the laughing lips; I follow up and down;But follow not the king’s white road toward the haste of town.
Afoot, the wash of waders, and aloft, the haze-veiled blue,—The heart it needeth nothing so the cast fall clean and true.O carol of the running reel, O flash of mottled back!And who will take the king’s white road, and who the cocksfoot track?
The hour-glass fills with weather like a wine of slow content:I throw the world behind me as a cartridge that is spent.Then home by summer starlight bear my grass-cool, mottled load;I quit the pleasant cocksfoot track: I take the king’s white road.
Seaforth Mackenzie.
XLVI.
The Ships.
The ships sail out, and the ships sail in,Unfolding and folding their great white sails;These weary and eager the haven to win,Those all-impatient to face the gales;