WORN COINAGE
f: AS calm as a mill-pond"-the old-world phrase Slips into speech like a well-oiled engine-rod, One of a host of familiar tokens Minted in the remote lives of strangers. Shall we always traffic in this alien coinage Lustreless now with use under new skies? ; Or strike others from the metal of our sun and wind and wate To bring the glow of fire into our words? For what have we to do with the reality of "mill-pond’’? Where is the old stone mili and its osiered stream? Where is the race, the dead or dying water-wheel Gristing its ghostly centuries of wheat? Where is the pond, darkened by trees, but darker with Time, Every drop in its mirror a life in the village’s story? Brooding there like an aged woman hooded in silence? And the idea of calm, how: shall we express it here, In this country wedded to wind, this tempestuous child of the morning? Where is the stillness of air, of leaf, of water, of bird, On this long high ricge, alone in the wandering ocean? Where even the earth is restless with hidden caprice? Shall we find stillness only in the mind’s sanctuary, That we must build for ourselves and consecrate, ‘ And there, looking out on the ceaseless ripple of landscape,
Draw absolute calm from our land’s unsleeping beauty? --
Alan
Mulgan
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570412.2.22
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 922, 12 April 1957, Page 11
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226WORN COINAGE New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 922, 12 April 1957, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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