Wellington in Two Moods

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 7, 20 March 1911, Page 14

Wellington in Two Moods

(By "Chiaeosoueo. ,1 ) The City of Dreadful Night. Such is Wellington, in its gloomy days. This wind-swept human habitation, dark as Dante's Inferno, raises thoughts in mc which words cannot adequately express. Pessimism gnaws at my heart and finds itseli" in congenial atmosphere when, heavy clouds hang over the hills and harbour of this City of Winds, making it the abomination of desolation. Gazing across the harbour one sees a gloomy abyss, which a S ;;inbre fancy easily transforms into the entrance to the bottomless pit. Little imagination is needed bo picture a dim archway in the' distance, with Dante's words cut deep in the cold grey stone : "All hope abandon ye who enter here." James Thomson (.".!!.V."), the poet of pessimism, author of ''The City of Dreadful Isight/' might have penned a. word - picture of Wellington in its dark days. I cannot j but, the feelings that arise in mc when gloom spreads her mantle over the Ciey, 1 will set down here in such prose as I can command, having, unhappily, no voice for singing. The mad, meaningless mystery of Life : its cruelty and inexorableness afflict my soul and weigh mc down with grief. lh such moments I am kin to the sad fraternity for whom Thomson wrote : I share their varied sufferings, their despair, their hopelessness of outlook, their deep, intense desire for annihilation. All who are wretched amd world-weary can claim mc as a brother. An utter weariness o-f life and its dreary daily round seizes mc when skies are grey in Wellington. My blood runs cold and eerie fancies of night and desolation enter my mind, numbing my spirits., and making my naked soul shiver with fear. In such moments as these all I desire is deep Oblivion : to pass away unnoticed, unregretted from the vain ■shows of life. All men seem hateful to mc, and the streets are places where phantoms pass and rep ass j each striving to- stifle the groans that rise in his heart. The world is the sad place that Keats saw and described in his "Ode to the Nightingale ,, : "Here where, men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows old, and speoiretliin and dies, Wiliere but to think is to be full of sorrows, Afncl leaden-eyed despairs, Where beatify cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow." Let us go down into the City of Jyiglit : the Pessimist will guide us. He moves on austere : "no hope can have no fear." There is the man who sought to find the golden clue* back to Childhood and Innocence. That is the Heaven he craves : to return to the Eden-state where ignorance was bliss, and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil had not yet borne its bitter fruit. He is frightful to behold, but he is human, and his story is as true as death : "A haggard filthy face with blocdisiiot eyes, An infamy for manhood to behold, He gasped all trembling, What, you want any prize ? You leave, to rob mc, wine and. lust and gold, And. all that men go nxad upon, since you, Have traced, my sacred secret of the clue? . . . . It leads mc ba<jk From this accursed night without a morn, And through the deserts which have else no track, And through vast wastes of horrorharunted time, To EJdien innocence in Eden, clime. And I become a nursling , soft and pure, An infant cradled an its mother's knee. Without a past, love-cheiished' and seeuir c; "Which if it saw tliis loathsome present Mc, Would plunge its face into tlie pillowi.ng breast, And scream .abhorrence hard to lull to rest. Here also is the poor forlorn soul, who had lost all ihop© long since, yet sought to pase the portal with the dread words written over it. Let us listen to his tale : "A demon warder clutched mc, Nolt so fast, First leave you-r hopes behind ! But years luave passed, Since I left all behind l mc, to the last. He snarled, "What thing , is this which, apes >a soul, And "would find entrance to our gulf of dole Without the payment of the settled toll? No hope had he: not a shadow of a Slope, nor would the unblest souls who sought entrance to the City of Dole part with ought of their last hopes to him. "And as they passed rae earnestly from eacfa A morsel of his hope I did "beseech,

To pay my entrance: but all mocked _my speech, Not one would cede a tittle of his store, 1 hough knowing that in instants three or four, He must resign the whole for evermore." Alas! poor soul, unhappy tho-u ! Shut out from the sad fraternity that dwell in the City of Dreadful Night: from the mourners who seek a morsel of comfort contemplating the miseries of their brethren. Such as these I have met and known in life : their sole comforter was lie who denied the. existencie of God, and counselled them to end their wretched existence when they wouid. Unhappy beings, cursed with life, yet dreading Death as an unknown terror I I have felt these things in this Dark City : 1 have writhed in torment of soul, and wrestled with demons from the Fit. I have cursed God, and have not died. 1 have loathed the idea of eternal life, Avhich aforetime was comforting to mc. 1 have shrunk from men as from obscene creatures lower than brutes. 1 have been filled with self-loathing and hatred of life. I have longed for power to destroy the universe by one mighty stroke. Darkness and sorrow filled my soul : paroxysms oi anger have exhausted mc, till I slept for slieer weariness. Such are the horrors of the City of Dreadful Night: "a land of darkness and the shadow of ds-ath : where the light is as darkness." The City of Gladsome Light. Is Wellington, yes. It was midwinter madness that made mc call it the City of Dreadful Night. I recant my indictment of the City of Summer breez.es. Here and now* it is day. The light oi day is strong, warm, magnetic : it comes straight from the heart of the life-giving Sun. The rays penetrate the marrow of my bones. It is good to. be alive. lam drunken with the Wine of Lfe : it dances in my veins. loetry, and romance and song vibrate along my nerves as the wind sweeps ■through the strings of an Aeolian lyre. One cannot have too much, life. Lagjht is the eaeeno© of life: life is love and lovg is one grand sweet lyric. ' While the Darkness reigned I was as one dead, dwelling amongst the tombs, in the Dread City, where the Day was. as Night. But now I sing a carol of joy, of joy to thee, O juife ! for I have tasted tliee, and found thee goodGive mc fulness of life : let mc wallow in sensuous pleasure. All that lives is related to mc. i am powerfully drawn to life in all its forms. Out of my abundance 1 will beget life : life rich, warm, pure and lusty. Let mc live fuller, love stronger, think more grandly, act nobler than any man ! Where is Misery, and its brood : where the Poet who sang the Litany of the Tombs for the sad fraternity of the. City of Night ? Gone: their eyes could not stand the excess or light that is; here. The rays of the Sun drive out Sorrow and her daughters. My eyes, shall feast on colour: on the blue and the green and the snow-white of the sea: on the deep, restful azure of the sky, where clouds shape themselves into phantasies of form : on the gold of the gorse, and the warm red of the city's roofs. What a blend of rich, colour! T!he soul tastes it and dallies with it even as the palate lets the rich wine caress it with delicious kisses :■ — "O for a draught of vintage that hath, been, Cooled a lotng age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth : O for a beaketr full of the warm South! Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrem.e, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim And purple-stained mouth." Here, beneath Italian skies, soft breezes mellowing the air, one revels in life. Poverty, pain, all negative, sorrowful things, can harm the mind no longer. The soul seeks but "the wild joy of living." It has no thought for the morrotv with its needs, its daily bread, the weary round of buttoning and unbuttoning. I have left the hol-low-eyed fraternity, bearing but a semblance of humanity and am "On the River" with "8.V." (the Poet of Woe) who also became a new man under the Summer Sun : — "Let any Voice out and over tli-e earth, Thro all the grief anid strife; With, a golden; joy in a. silver mirth : Thank God for Life!" r 'Driruk! Drink! open your mouth, This air is as rich as -wine; Flowing with balm from tfiio eunmy south, And health fram the western bMne. Drink ! Drink ! ope.n your mouth ! Tthis ai-r is the choicest "wine; From that golden grape the eun i' the I south Of 'Heaven's broad vine."