Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/65

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A Leave-taking.
29
And my spirit of singing deliver
 In the old hidden birthplace of song,
Sitting fast by the rapid young river
 With trees overarched, by no strong
  Sun or moon ever parched.

A singing place fitter than vessel
 Cold winds draw away to the sea,
Where many birds flutter and nestle
 And come near and wonder at me,
Where the bell-bird sets solitudes ringing:
 Many times I have heard and thrown down
My lyre in despair of all singing;
 For things lovely what word is a crown
  Like the song of a bird?

That haunt is too far for me wingless,
 And the hills of it sink out of sight,
Yet my thought were but broken and stringless,
 And the daylight of song were but night,
If I could not at will a winged dream let
 Lift me and take me and set
Me again by the trees and the streamlet;
 These leagues make a wide water, yet
  The whole world shall not hide.

For the island secure in my spirit
 At ease on its own ocean rides,
And Memory, a ship sailing near it,
 Shall float in with favouring tides,
Shall enter the harbours and land me
 To visit the gorges and heights
Whose aspects seemed once to command me,
 As queens by their charms command knights
  To achievements of arms.

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