Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/149

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The White Convolvulus.
113
“I am a daughter of air and light,Of bird and willow the playmate white,Fed on the fire of our god the sun,Not by desire of a mortal won.
“Withering, dying at mortal touch,I fade away in the spoiler’s clutch,Never in prison to droop my span,In the heavy air of the house of man.
“But here I nod to the drowsy wind,In a tremulous hammock of tendrils twined,Eyeing my friends on their journey by,The honey-sucker and dragon-fly.
“Watching them ruffle the glassy floorOf the long, green, arching corridor,Whose whispering willows dip and rise,Cutting the stream as the current flies.
“In the dim sweet water-world are seenMazes of streaming and shifting green,And deeper, dreaming beyond, a fewSilvery clouds in the bowl of blue.
“And there I gaze at the spectral sky,The ghost of the rocking sphere on high,Till touched by twilight my flower is furled,And my shadow steals from the water-world.
“I must be free as the wildest thing,In the leafy tangle to curl and cling,Free to laugh in the beams of day,Free on the blast to be borne away.
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