CLEMATIS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 285, 22 February 1928, Page 6

CLEMATIS

The evening was very still and cool. Over the wooded hills a silver light brightened as the stars twinkled into the sky and the little revulet shimmered like a ribbon as the waters splashed over the rocks and tumbled in rainbow spray on to the ferns and moss on the banks. And high into the starred heaven the moonboat sailed and swung, her bow laden with precious cargo of gleaming jewels. For in the silvery crescent sailed Leidre the moon girl, who gathers the fallen stars from the lakes on earth and bears them back to shine once more in the sky. The slender, lovely maiden is ever busy in her little crescent shin, for of late the stars have become adventurous and love to slip into the lakes on earth for the night, since they know that practical humans call them “reflections,” and the poets “drowned stars,” and no one suspects them of spending the night on earth. They know, too, that Leidre’s star net is quite infallible, unless they fall on the land, for then the fragile meshes would catch in the trees, and next* morning the gossiping birds would twitter delightedly of the beauty of this new gossamer web, and no one would notice the little fallen star who shimmered her light away beneath the fern. One night, as Leidre guided the sickle moonship through the silvered darkness of the sky, she saw a star beside her tear the veil of night with a gleaming flash, as a storm wind rips a sail, and disappear into the darkness. And Leidre leaned over the side of her little carven craft and, resting on her paddles, peered among the trees on earth for the shimmering lake which hid the fallen star. While she looked she saw a dazzling cloud of silver and gold shoot through the heavens and fall into a great wood on a mountain slope below, and, turning fearfully to the bow of her ship, she realised that her treasure was lost lost to the heavens for ever, but given to enrich the earth. For when lovely Aurora, tinting the ivory clouds in the east, shed her morning lustre on the quivering leaves of the little graceful creeper that had wreathed itself in festoons over the toll forest trees, she revealed a dancing cluster of starry white clematis laughing joyc/usly into the lovely face of the star-seeking Leidre, who was sailing her silver moonship behind the clouds as the dawn brightened in the colourful east. —Little Swift Canoe (Fitzie Morris). AUTUMN Bent are the boughs of the orchard tree With the mellow fruit so fair to see; And the golden treasure for you and Autumn’s here! Time of the year when the bright leaves fall, The time of harvest and festival; The fairest, the richest season of all— Autumn’s here! Over the hills, all in day, Lightfoot summer has stolen away; And the sky is tinged with a liaz'e of grey Autumn’s here!