THOUGHTS ON JUBILEE DAY.

Te Aroha News, 15 February 1890, Page 5

THOUGHTS ON JUBILEE DAY.

Ring out your jubileo from brazen lips With clangorous iron tongue; Flaunt ye from turret, spire, and house-top Gay-tinted, vaunting banners courting the breeze; Belch forth your mimic thunder From the sable-throated cannon. Voicing red-heeled conquest in a fifth decade. Blow ye the trumpet in this time of peace, Clash your tuned cymbals. Echo your gilded halls, Flash-fronted meretricious. To roll of mercenary drum, To squeak of clarion, And tramp of footstep. Conquerors and conquered. Treading together to martial strain, The land that now belongs To God knows who! If right of bloody conquest Make it yours, oh, Pakeha, By right of carnage Of your brother man, By right of lust of land, By force of arms wielded In unrighteous cause, By right of rapine, Bible, rum and sword. By broken treaty, broken pledge. And violated promise given, By serpents cunning. And by foul device and fraud. Then, truly, Pakeha, this is thine own domain, Therefore rejoice, and raise i From pulpit and from platform praise To Him who holds within the hollow of His hand The destinies of this and every land. Shout aloud, dance, with gladness sing, “ Who now is serf was once a Maori King.” Wade ye knee deep in dust, as ’twere a flood, Each particle conceals a brother's blood, Which cries aloud with solemn awful Bound From all the confiscated blood-stained ground Of men who from the foeman would not flinch. But for their hearths and homes fought inch by

inch Till for their footsoles found they not a place. Yes, oh! triumph o’er this noble race; Let hist’ry’s pages all your glory tell, How meanness triumphed, and how heroes fell; How their descendants, cowed, degraded, beaten, Ye lured afar your triumph but to sweeten With gaudy tinsel so the landshark leads Benighted savages with strings of beads, And grabs, by contracts that are traced in sand, A million acres of their Fatherland. Ye might have spared the remnant of a nation This lasting, last of all, humiliation. Have they no thought of those who fought and bled 1 Have they no memories of their hallowed dead 1 No proud traditions of the days of yore When this fair land was theirs from shore to shore? When, tho’ they bent the knee to stock or stone, No liar or sleek hypocrite wa3 known. Strangers alike were they to tyrants’ drum, Strange creeds and “ missionary rum ” Dragged at your chariot wheels. Why were they, pray, “.Butchered to make an Auckland holiday ?” Pko Pudor. Auckland, 10th February, 1890.