Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/70

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34
In London.
There, hour by hour, the lazy tide creeps inUpon the sands I shall not pace again—Save in a dream,—and, hour by hour, the tideCreeps lazily out, and I behold it not,Nor the young moon slow sinking to her restBehind the hills; nor yet the dead white treesGlimmering in the starlight: they are ghostsOf what has been, and shall be never more.No, never more!
Nor shall I hear againThe wind that rises at the dead of nightSuddenly, and sweeps inward from the sea,Rustling the tussock, nor the wekas’ wailEchoing at evening from the tawny hills.
In that deserted garden that I lov’d,Day after day, my flowers drop unseen;And as your Summer slips away in tears,Spring wakes our lovely Lady of the Bush,The Kowhai, and she hastes to wrap herselfAll in a mantle wrought of living gold;Then come the birds, who are her worshippers,To hover round her: tuis swift of wing,And bell-birds flashing sudden in the sun,Carolling: ah! what English nightingale,Heard in the stillness of a summer eve,From out the shadow of historic elms,Sings sweeter than our Bell-bird of the Bush?And Spring is here: now the Veronica,Our Koromiko, whitens on the cliff,The honey-sweet Manuka buds, and burstsIn bloom, and the divine Convolvulus,Most fair and frail of all our forest flowers,Stars every covert, running riotous.O quiet valley, opening to the East,
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