Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/64

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28
A Leave-taking.
O what am I leaving behind me?
 No sorrow with tears for its debt—
No face that shall follow and find me—
 No friend to recall and regret—
Thought shall raise up the ghosts of some faces,
 But not of the faces of men.
A voice out of fair forest places
 Shall haunt me and call me, as when
  I dwelt by them all.

Now my days leave the soft silent byway,
 And clothed in a various sort,
In iron or gold, on the highway
 New feet shall succeed, or stop short:
Shod hard these may be, or made splendid,
 Fair and many, or evil and few,
But the going of bare feet has ended,
 Of naked feet set in the new
  Meadow grass sweet and wet.

I will long for the ways of soft walking,
 Grown tired of the dust and the glare,
And mute in the midst of much talking,
 Will pine for the silences rare;
Streets of peril and speech full of malice
 Will recall me the pastures and peace
Which gardened and guarded those valleys
 With grasses as high as the knees,
  Calm as high as the sky.

As the soul, were the body made regal,
 With pinions completed and light,
Majestic and swift as yon seagull,
 Even now would I take a quick flight,

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