Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/72

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36
From “Ranolf and Amohia.”

XVI.

From “Ranolf and Amohia.”

It was a wondrous realm beguiledOur youth amid its charms to roam;O’er scenes more fair, serenely wild,Not often summer’s glory smiled;When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright,No alabaster half so white—Hung lightly in a luminous domeOf sapphire—seemed to float and sleepFar in the front of its blue steep;And almost awful, none the lessFor its liquescent loveliness,Behind them sunk—just o’er the hillThe deep abyss, profound and still—The so immediate Infinite;That yet emerged, the same, it seemedIn hue divine and melting balm,In many a lake whose crystal calmUncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;Where sky above and lake belowWould like one sphere of azure show,Save for the circling belt alone,The softly-painted purple zoneOf mountains—bathed where nearer seenIn sunny tints of sober green,With velvet dark of woods between,All glossy glooms and shifting sheen;While here and there, some peak of snowWould o’er their tenderer violet lean.
And yet within this region, fairWith wealth of waving woods—these glades
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