BY WM. PITTI PALMER.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 714, 13 January 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

BY WM. PITTI PALMER.

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom. The sun rolled bleak and bare, Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast, Of the threads of my golden hair : And when the broad tent of the firmament Arose on its airy bars, I penciled the hue of the matchless blue And spangled it round the stars. I painted the flowers of Eden bowers And their leaves of living green, And mine were the dyes m the sinless eyes, Of Eden's virgin queen. And when the fiend's art en the trustful heart Had fastened its mortal spell, In the silvery spheie of the first-born tear To the trembling earth I fell. When the waves that burst o'er the world accursed Their work of wrath had sped, And the arks lone few, the tried and true, Came forth amongst the dead, With the wondrous gleam 3of my brfdal beams I bade their terror's cease, As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll God's covenant of Peace. Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast, Night's funeral shadow slept-— When Shepherd swains, on Bethlehem's plains Their lowly vigils kept — Then I flashed on their sight the heralds bright Of Heaven's redeeming plan, As the orn— y chantedmorn of a Saviour boy to Joy, j - the outcast man ! Equal favor I show to the lofty and low, On the just and unjust I decend ; E'en the /blind, whose _vain spheres roll m darkness and tears, Feel my smile, the best smile of a friend I Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced As the rose m the garden of kings, At the crysalis bier of the worm I appear, And lo I the gay butterfly wings. The desolate morn, like a rfourner forlorn, Conceals all the pride of her charms, Till I bid the bright hours chase the night from her bowers And lead her young day to her arms ! And when the gay„ rover seeks Eve for his lover And sinks to her balmy repose, I wrap the soft rest by the zephyr-fanned West, In curtains of amber and rose ! From my Bentinel sleep by the night-dreaded deep I gaze with unslumbering eyes, When the cynosure star of the mariner Is blotted from out the sky ! And guided by me through the merciless sea, Though sped. by the huricane's wings, His compa.sleßS. dark, lone, weltering bark To the haven home safely he brings, I waken the flowers m their dew-spangled bowers The birds m their chambers of green, And mountain and plain glow with beauty again, As they bask m the matinal sheen. 0, if such the glad worth of my presence on earth, Though fretful and fleeting the while, What glories must rest on the home of the blest, Ever bright with the Deity's smile !