Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/117
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
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.
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 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.
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;
Unfolding and folding their great white sails;
These weary and eager the haven to win,
Those all-impatient to face the gales;