Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/152
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116
Mount Tarawera.
Its ramparts stretched along the sky,
One mighty Mountain reared on high
Far o’er the rest a level crest,
With jutting rounded parapet
And rude rock-corbels rough-beset,
Half-blurred by time and tempest’s fret;
While smooth its slopes came sweeping down
From that abraded cornice brown.
The mountain this, the ruddy steep,
That Ranolf, sun-awaked from sleep,
So longed to scale; and high in air
In glad imagination share
Its sky-possessing majesty
Of haughty isolation!—there
Into each dark recess to pry
And every sight and secret see
Its lofty level might reveal,
Or those grim fissures’ depths conceal,
That split the Mountain into three.
About the heights, soft clouds, a few,
Clung here and there like floating flue;
Like helpless sea-birds breeze-bereft,
Unmoving spread their pinions white—
From jutting crag, deep-bathed in light,
To slip away in snowy flight;
Or closely crouched in shadowy cleft,
Like lambing ewes the flock has left.
Below, o’erjoyed at darkness fleeing,
Reviving Nature woke again
To all the exceeding bliss of being!
The minnows leapt the liquid plain
In shoals—each silvery-shivering train,
A sudden dash of sprinkled rain!
The wild-ducks’ black and tiny fleet
Shot in and out their shy retreat;
The cormorant left his crowded tree
One mighty Mountain reared on high
Far o’er the rest a level crest,
With jutting rounded parapet
And rude rock-corbels rough-beset,
Half-blurred by time and tempest’s fret;
While smooth its slopes came sweeping down
From that abraded cornice brown.
The mountain this, the ruddy steep,
That Ranolf, sun-awaked from sleep,
So longed to scale; and high in air
In glad imagination share
Its sky-possessing majesty
Of haughty isolation!—there
Into each dark recess to pry
And every sight and secret see
Its lofty level might reveal,
Or those grim fissures’ depths conceal,
That split the Mountain into three.
About the heights, soft clouds, a few,
Clung here and there like floating flue;
Like helpless sea-birds breeze-bereft,
Unmoving spread their pinions white—
From jutting crag, deep-bathed in light,
To slip away in snowy flight;
Or closely crouched in shadowy cleft,
Like lambing ewes the flock has left.
Below, o’erjoyed at darkness fleeing,
Reviving Nature woke again
To all the exceeding bliss of being!
The minnows leapt the liquid plain
In shoals—each silvery-shivering train,
A sudden dash of sprinkled rain!
The wild-ducks’ black and tiny fleet
Shot in and out their shy retreat;
The cormorant left his crowded tree