TAUPO

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 8, 6 March 1952, Page 1

TAUPO

Great font of nature's purest element, Ageless, eternal, crystailine, and free; Distilled essence of the untrodden snows That crowd the high top of this favoured land. Fairest of all its treasured waterways, Mecca of Maori and of Pakeha, Taupo ! the central heart of Maoriland — Vast source of power and light, ever renewed. Thee we have seen in many moods and loved Even when tumultuous you hurtled on Before the icy biasts that northward raged From frozen wastes that rampart your far shores; For every wave that breaks upon your beach Curls in translucent beauty; Nor could those miles of tumbling surge destroy The clear transparence of thy purity. Long ere recorded time were enthroned There in thy loneliness, remote, serene, silent Save when those sentineis of thy southern shore Roared out their thunderous challenge to the skies, And spewed their white hot dunnage o'er the land; Masking out briefly that eternal blue, But wrecking all thy shore with sulphurous spoil. Age followed age in time's unending stream, While patient nature covered up her wounds; Weaving a mantle of green loveliness Over the rocks and up those mountain slopes, Where now a smoke plume tops the crater rim As Ngaruahoe in her slumber stirs, Dreaming of ancient glories; with sister peaks — ' Three Samsons tamed to serve, through thee, this land.

Taupo, January 1, 1952.

— H.H.

S.