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The Plunge

“One cannot but be regretful that the young poets have in their sincere searching for self-expression, turned their eyes towards the cool, abstract pool in which the modern English poets bathe their unfevered heads, when New Zealand offers the bubbling, boiling, viscous stuff of a civilisation yet uncultured, wherein they might bravely plunge.”

—Extract from “Press Review.”

S, here goes:—

Into the prancing geyser,
Into the boiling pool,
With its fiery freaks
And its eerie creaks;
An 1 the hissing steam in its fury shrieks,
“They'd dump me if I kept cool.”
Into the boiling cauldron;
Into the sizzling hell
Where the craters fume,
And the earthquakes boom,
And the devil grins in the engine room,
And a tourist blurts, “Well! Well!”
Into the big blue morning;
Out where the tall pines stand-
Where the bush-bird sings
And the wild-flower springs,
And dripping with music the forest rings
With a song of Maoriland.
Into the sun-drenched meadow,
Lit with the sweet perfume
Of the golden sheaf—
Where old Nature's brief
Clear visions the turn of a brand new leaf,
Romanced with a rare, “By goom!'
Into the breezy bushland;
Into the fern-laced glade—
Where the moo-cows reign,
And the steers are slain
To produce the stuff that builds
brawn and brain
With which the poets are made.

—George Meek.
Illustrated by John Holmwood.

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