Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/58

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22
A Colonist in his Garden.
Amid the vale, the waters
Undeviating flow.
Past root and rock and forest
They go as they should go.

What keeps the brook so certain,
What rhymes the stars so true,
Hath sure some perfect reason
For parting me and you.

XII.

A Colonist in his Garden.

He reads a letter.

Dim grows your face, and in my ears,
Filled with the tramp of hurrying years,
  Your voice dies, far apart.
Our shortening day draws in, alack!
Old friend, ere darkness falls, turn back
  To England, life and art.

Write not that you content can be,
Pent by that drear and shipless sea
  Round lonely islands rolled:
Isles nigh as empty as their deep,
Where men but talk of gold and sheep
  And think of sheep and gold.