Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/19

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Introduction.
xv

set up before we turn to moulding the entablature. There is a time which some of us look for, when New Zealand will be assigned a place among the nations not only on account of its exports of wool and gold, or for richness and worth in horses and footballers, but also by reason of its contributions to art and science;—when there will be more than one New Zealand scientist in the Royal Society, and more than one New Zealand poet in the anthologies; and “when New Zealand books, New Zealand pictures, New Zealand statues and buildings will gain some repute and note in the civilized world.” That time has not yet arrived. Nevertheless, there are first fruits ripe already, and if the sheaf we have bound is a very little one, it surely holds ears with no poor promise of good grain to come. And even the hardest-headed race of farmers and shepherds and workers in wood and metal has its dreams and its seers of visions (and even sends some of them into Parliament), and may be helped by the labour of such towards the deep-breasted fulness of mature nationality.

Of the writers in this book, with one or two exceptions, none are by profession literary people purely, for there is no literary life in the State. It is only a small percentage of any population that supports artistic effort, and in New Zealand the gross population is not large enough for this

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.