Te Wharangi.

Give to me the summer sun, and white
gulls calling!
Distant peaks with bush-clad slopes,
against the summer blue;
Give me a fishing-boat, sails white
‘gainst far horizon—
They're found at Te Wharangi, the
golden summer through.
Where else do autumn mornings
break, their white mists rolling,
Clearer or more beautiful than o'er the
river wide,
Where early pioneers first glimpsed
the land of their adoption,
Smiling a sunny welcome as they sailed
in with the tide?
Oh! think of winter-evening fires, the
blue smoke curling
From crackling blaze of drift-wood
logs that lighten up the room;
The bracing air at morning with a
white frost biting!
And a glorious sun that banishes the
early-morning gloom.
Show me at eventide, the light, that
warns ships passing,
And challenges the full-moon's glance
that ripples on the sea;
Casting a gleam far out, on waters
phosphorescent
Whose ever-rolling restlessness calls
to the heart of me.
Show me Kapiti's dim outline (with a
froth of fog ling'ring),
Where Maori chieftains battled a cen-
tury before.
By the river still are traces of Te
Rauparaha's passing,
When he rested with his warriors upon
the southern shore.
Glimpsed through the evening haze, his
snow-crown glist'ning,
Proudly stands Mount Egmont, a land-
mark there, alone;
Gazing over miles of sea from time
immemorial—
A wealth of Nature's secrets stored
within his wintry cone!
Give me this grandeur, too; and the
sudden gale blowing!
Whipping spray-tossed breakers to a
deep-toned sullen roar,
Driving rain in torrents with a flooding
of the lowlands!
Littering piles of debris for miles along
the shore!
And the fishing-boats a-pitching — at
their anchors straining—
(Not for them to venture out until
the storm is past)
Anxious men that come aboard in
dripping mackintoshes;
(The anchor-chains need tightening!
for the tide is making fast).
And the storm passed by at midnight—
and a pale moon riding
Aloof and shining sadly on the chaos
of the flood—
Poor defenceless animals, trapped by
yellow waters,
Cast upon the river-beach with
tangled heaps of wood!
There's something in her every mood
that stills vain longing,
That calms the tired and weary heart
and soothes the troubled mind,
Her sunsets, storms and moon-bathed
beach will ever draw you home-
wards—
You'll find peace at Te Wharangi, for
she is passing kind!

—M. Western.

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