Poets’ Corner

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 6

Poets ’ Corner

AOTEAROA (Written for THE SUN) I may say, to myself, though I am sad “the gods have sent me to London for some great encl” and to he true and wise, may try to find in these dull streets one long Upanishad; or I may watch the lights in the Thames glittering, sardonically forgetting a Battersea noon: or, ignoring the town, on a bright afternoon go out to Kew; and in the evening adore . the palace washed in golden light as I stand on the lake bridge in St. James’ Park. London is beautiful when the night is dark and even in the full day there is delight—the clear voices of the Abbey choir, the columns, the “ king’s red” altarfrontal. Yet sometimes when I am tired the contrapuntal tunes of the sea in Aotearoa

call to a heart weary of bricks and stone. A white beach outweighs a mosaic chancel and all the dirty city’s iveary tinsel. 1 may say “London is Camelot.” . Meanwhiles unknown

to me, the renegade, the sun is shining in a New Zealand forest glade ivhere 1 might have been lying ndkecl, and on

Muriwai the roaring breakers are for ever signing

their signatures thirty miles long, on the sand. 1 may say to myself “the gocls arc wise’’ and it is true, but sometimes my bright eyes are tired of dullness, and long for my own land. Geoffrey de Montalk. Winchester Street, London.