The Waipukurau Press. Friday, February 16, 1906. EXHIBITION ODE.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 18, 16 February 1906, Page 2

The Waipukurau Press. Friday, February 16, 1906. EXHIBITION ODE.

— o — A contemporary waxes facetious on the subject, but there is truth in the remarks : —“ An original ode ” is demanded by the promoters of the New Zealand Exhibition, which is to be set to music and sung at the opening ceremony, and the usual prize is offered to the sender of the best sample of poetic art. Why the ode should be original does not appear. There are hundreds of such compositions that have been produced for previous exhibitions in different parts of the world, and each one of them is still as good as new. As a matter of fact, there is a perplexing plethora of mechanical verse in the world for which no demand whatever exists, and instead of encouraging the outturn of more the exhibition would do a better service to the manufacturers of such stuff by relieving the market of its present glut. There seems no reason why an ode which does for the opening of of one exhibition should not work equally well at another. Tne fact ofits being second-hand does not matter. Solomons proverbs are about twenty-second-hand by ibis time, but they are just as serviceable as when first written. And so with any of the odes that were written for exhibition openings since the industry was first started. Usually these competitions encourage long-haired persons who ought to be doing something useful for a living to waste time writing incoherently about the advantages of living “ ’neatb the Southern Cross,” a id making rythmic remarks to the effect that wattle blossoms are gold-colored and summer breezes whisper amidst the boughs of gum trees away out on lonesome country places, where swagmen tramp round in bursted boots, carrying battered black billies, and feast on the glory of the rolling oceans of sunlit ether all round, but would much at the sdime price prefer beer in humble pint pots. One of these odes is accepted, and the composer perhaps rtunedfor life by being made bes, eve that he is a born poet, while sree

hundred others are rejected, and the same number of men filled with the bitterness of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. Besides, look at the injury it does to the barbering business.