Original Poetry.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1764, 28 August 1874, Page 3

Original Poetry.

THE WHETU PLAINS. A lonely rock above a midnight plain, A sky across whose wondrous brightness flies No shadow from the Children of the Rain, A stream whoso double crescent far off lies, And seems to glitter back the silver of the skies. The table-lands stretch, step by step, below In giant terraces whose deeper ledges Are black with bands of swamp (that near I know Convolvulus-entwined) whose whitened edges Are ghostly silken flags of seeded watersedges. All still, all silent, 'tis a songless land, That hears no echo of the nightingale; No sound of waters filling lone and grand Through sighing forests to the lower vale, No whisper in the grass, so wan, and grey, and pale. When Earth was tottering in its infancy, This rock, a drop of molten stone, was hurled And tost on waves of fire (like those we see Distinctly though afar), evolved and whirled A photosphere of flame around the solar world. Swift from the central deeps the lightning flow, Piercing the heart of Darkness like a spear, Hot blasts of steam and vapour thundered through The lurid blackness of the atmosphere. A million years have passed and left strange quiet here. Peace, the deep peace, of universal death, Enfolds the fair and kindly earth of old. The air is dead, and stirs no living breath To break these awful silences that hold The spirit in their clutch and numb the heart with cold. My soul hath wept for Rest with longing tears, Called it the perfect crown of human life, But now I shudder lest the coming years Should be with these moat gloomy terrors rife, When palsied arms drop down outwearied, with the strife. May age conduct me with a gentle hand Beneath the quiet shadows brooding o'er The solemn twilight of the Evening Land, Where Earth's discordant noises pierce no more, But sleeping waters dream along a sleepy shore. Where I, when Life hath spent its fiery strength, And flickers low, may rest in quietness, Till on my waiting brow there falls at length The deeper calm of the Death-Angel's kiss, But not, oh God, such peace, such awful peace as this. E.