"NEW ZEALAND VERSE."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 9 April 1907, Page 7

"NEW ZEALAND VERSE."

(From Our London Correspondent).

LONDON, February 16,

The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., of Paternoster Square, are publishing a smart little volume entitled "New Zealand Verse." Among the contributors I see the well-known names of Arthur H. Adams, Johannes C. Anderson, Charles C. Bowen, Frederick Napier Broome, David "William H. Burn, Hubert Church Ebenezer Storry Hay, Henry Jacobs, John Liddell Kelly, Will Lawson, Jessie Mackay, Eleanor Elizabeth Montgomery, Annie Murgatroyd, P. J. O'Regan, Marie R. Randle, William Pember Reeves, Catherine H. Richardson, D. H. Ross, William Satchell, M. A. Sinclair, William Jukes Steward, H. L. Twistleton, Arnold Wall, Dora Wilcox, W. H. Wills, Anne Glenny Wilson, David j McKee Wright, etc. , In the introduction we are informed that in these islands, first colonised by Europeans less than 70 years ago, there has existed right from the very beginning a tradition that it was the right thing to write poetry. And so much has this tradition grown with the years that in a recent prize poem competition which brought out 1,084 "poems" from the Englishspeaking world, the quota from New Zealand was 74. The writer goes on to express the hope, which is fully shared by us on this side, that a time is coming when New Zealand will be assigned a place among the nations not only on account of its exports of wool and gold, or for richness and worth in horses and footballers, but -also by reason of its contributions to art and science; when there will be more than one New Zealand scientist in the Royal Society, and more than one New Zealand poet in the antho'o#ies; and "when New Zealand books, New Zealand pictures, New Zealand statues and buildings, will gain some -repute and note m■' the civilised world."

The uninitiated are helped to a proper understanding of the idioms and phrases that are bound to occur in such a work by a table of notes at the end of the book, and there is also unlindex of authors and bibligraphical reference. The verses givefr are, of course, all of the choicest, but I think the following are specially well worth committing to memory. 'They form part of "A Little Prayer," by W. Francis Chambers : "Give me a friend with whom to spend Life's golden hours in gladness, A comrade, who remaineth true, Alike in joy and sadness. A little bread, a roof, a bed, And each new morn a blessing, la all I ask from week to week—These wants I come confessing.