Wellington Wind.

When these gaunt and scrawny slopes,
Blemished with yellow houses and with yellow gorse,
Were clad in forests' green magnificence;
When the tall and stately Totara,
The mighty Rata
And the slender green of the treefern
Decked the hills with verdant mantle,
Didst blow with the self same force as now—
Whistling shrilly among the creaking limbs
Of giant trees, and jarring the leaves
Into a loud whisper of complaint?
Like a vast organ played by immortal hand
Was the sound of thy passage among the branches;
But no more, no more dost vent thy rage
Against the resistant bush;
Whine amidst the houses
Yellow painted with red roofs,
And clatter tin fences
And whirl in fantastic eddies of dust
Along the narrow streets,
Through which in banal clatter
Breaking the cathedral rest of Maori ghosts
Rattle the speeding tramcars.

R. T. D.