JESSIE MACKAY

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12609, 20 November 1926, Page 12

JESSIE MACKAY

Sternness and Gentleness are Blended in Her Verse

eiie is an odd blend of sternness and gentleness, our veteran na- 1 tional poetess. The gentleness is the seal of a great charity, the sternness tho sign of a devotion to bare truth. She pities the lowest, but she extols the highest, and these are the two clearshining qualities of this, her latest book of rhymes. The two lands of her heart are in it— Scotland and Maoriland, two unconflicting loyalties, and the book is, like herself, international. It takes in Serbia, Montenegro, England, France, Russia, and Ireland. She wlio has watched from her little eyrie on the Cashmere Hills the world as from a watch-tower has an eye for the distress signals ox all peoples. She foresees the terrible final conflict between right and might, —the Armageddon so long foretold. But she is not too far-eyed, for all that, to miss the wonder of her own innocent, unbattled countryside. Take this, of South Conterbury:— Thousand ye'oinan valleys greet you, Brown in Hertha’s honest homespun; Sheer and shadowed gorges deep, Breasted hill and vapoury upland Hymn you in the spate and lull you 'With the myriad bleat of sheep. Sheer and shadowed gorges deep. Wasn’t she born amongst them, and didn’t she go back there two years ago like one on a pilgrimage?

But turn the next leaf of the hook and we are in Scotland in James V.’s time; James who married Magdalen, daughter of the King of France, though drumlie Death already had marked her for his own. He brought her home to Scotland—

France, the goodly garden land, was all . a fuiry flame That ran before them marish wise, and ever went and came. And the grev rocks of Scotland/ be sure they blushed anil bowed For grace to hei —but nb, the mist; it happed so like a shroud. Sho who knows and follows like a hawk tlio movements of the moderns, by some dualism, has also the gift of back looking. She has caught the spells of the days of samite. Two and two in Aidenn. In the piteous middle place! Is tho mist of Aidenn gainlcss? Lovers all have wept them stainless; Saints have prayed away their sorrow. Shall not Aidenn have a morrow? Mary purest, give them grace. She can sing little mournful notes, too, like a widowed thrush, spent from gl-iev ing,— O my dear, my dear! 1 1 see with your eyes, I hear as it flics Your song go round by the old hearth- , stone! But you come never By loch or by river; * Far out I am faring alone, alone. One hears a harp to that, a harp with soft bitter twanging like the harp that follows Jordan in the Sliciling Song. Mournful, too, is the lament for Mary Colborne-Veel, another singer of songs who was dear to iler. One cannot help noticing and marking as a special characteristic her devotion to uncommon words. Roving at random through the sheaf one finds such seldom seen simple names as “garth”; “redo”; “waterdtmk” ; “let”; “levin”; “porte”: “deemster”: “sain”; Stevenson would he pleased with her choice. Was it not he who took the dictionary and marked all the words that sang? Well, so much for the songs sho has written of the outside world. There is no space to quote them all. She lias written of the aspirations of Serbia as if she had been born Serb, of the sorrows of Russia as if she had been born Russ. Sho lias written of Ireland ns if she had been born into its rains. Now far her own country! We, of a younger generation, knowing how many the troubadours of these other countries, rejoice to see songs of our own land. Wo, too, are a people. And, strangely enough, she seems to

; be at her best in tho Maori s«iigs. j There is a wildness in them that is I utterly original. We, who are born out of the lands of our fathers, cannot write of them without a restraint, a , sense of separation, a feeling that* our relationship is of the second degree only. We have no such feeling when we write of the land wo were born in. There is a murmur, a roar, in “To Whenua Kura.” “Te ‘Whenua Kura” is the Sacred Land of Old Time.- It has tho Maori air. Again, again, again, again, Look on Te Whenua Kura! The brown, wouuin-breastcd hill, Tlie grev looping river, The gloamy deep green gorges—- ! Then look no more forever. Lost, lost, lost, lost. Lost is Te Whenua Ivura! .Sun and moon shall grace the hill, . And the grey-looped river, But the dark heart goes with me, And the widowed eyes forever. Mrs Forrester, who went with Grey - to Maori parties as a child, has set the words to music. The fulness, the mellowness of the Maori vowels swell clearly in the “Lakeland Tangi.” I Back lies tho light, of Itongo and of > Kehua The kind, dropping light of Aotea-roa! - Back lies th© might of Tu and Tano , infinite, The chant of the priest, the fury of the ’ toa. 1 Cry, cry, and-cry I a tangi unto Rehua—- & For the kind brown people that wander and that wither!

Fry, cry. and beat on the gate of cold . eternity The- tea’s track’s untrod; we go, but whither, whither? ■ And fierce with the crackling of spears and the-bounding'of limbs is the “Battle Song.” Bones of our fathers lie Tomblees and whitening. Now is the ventriug hour, Sons of the lightning! Shout till the sound of you Troubles the starway; Ireap till you stir the dead, Pale on the -Far-wavi Patua, pntiisi t Ka male, hu! She has the old legends in the storehouse of her brain, and brings them forth in season. Very pitiful, very tender, to tho lesser children was Tane Mahiita, who saved them from famine in the cruel winter by a decree te bis trees to berry more thickly. And the berrying of the little birds was the harvest of Tano Mahuta. Tane Mahuta then Took tho word onward; Said, “O my berry trees, Bloom and look sunward. Bloom for rue, bear for 1110 Thicker and deeper. Let lho bird harvest Be rich to the reaper.” The ideal she holds for her brave little country is set forth in “The Lust Crusade.” Therein tho knights from Normandy, from Guienne, and from Winchester are turned back, but the New Zealander is sent onward.' Pass nii; the quest of Palestine, The weary ages through Wns hohlen for a nhmudoss knight, Ulisquircd, afoot, like you. Unequired, afoot, he is, hut you have given him an oriflannuc. Jcssio Mackav! ‘ —EILEEN DUGGAN. Wellington.