Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/79

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The Pink and White Terraces.
43
To mark the hundred baths in view—Crystalline azure, snowy-rimmed—The marge of every beauteous pondCurve after curve—each lower beyondThe higher—outsweeping white and wide,Like snowy lines of foam that glideO’er level sea sands lightly skimmedBy thin sheets of the glistening tide. They climb those milk-white flats incrustedAnd netted o’er with wavy ropesOf wrinkled silica. At last—Each basin’s heat increasing fast—The topmost step the pair surmount,And lo, the cause of all! Around,The circling cliffs a crater bound—Cliffs damp with dark-green moss—their slopesAll crimson-stained with blots and streaks—White-mottled and vermilion-rusted;And in the midst, beneath a cloudThat ever upward rolls and reeksAnd hides the sky with its dim shroud,Look where upshoots a fuming fount—Up through a blue and boiling poolPerennial—a great sapphire steaming,In that coralline crater gleaming.Upwelling ever, amethystal,Ebullient comes the bubbling crystal!Still growing cooler and more coolAs down the porcelain stairway slipsThe fluid flint, and slowly drips,And hangs each basin’s curling lipsWith crusted fringe each year increases,Thicker than shear-forgotten fleeces;More close and regular than rows,Long rows of snowy trumpet-flowersSome day to hang in garden-bowers,
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