CCXXXII
TO ONE IN ENGLAND
I send to you
Songs of a Southern Isle,
Isle like a flower
In warm seas low lying:
Songs to beguile
Some wearisome hour,
When Time’s tired of flying.
Songs which were sung
To a rapt listener lying,
In sweet lazy hours,
Where wild-birds’ nests swing,
And winds come a-sighing
In Nature’s own bowers.
Songs which trees sing,
By summer winds swayed
Into rhythmical sound;
Sweet soul-bells sung
Through the Ngaio’s green shade,
Unto one on the ground.
Songs from an Island
Just waking from sleeping
In history’s morning;
Songs from a land
Where night shadows creep
When your day is dawning.
* * * * * O songs, go your way,
Over seas, over lands,
Though friendless sometimes,
Fear not, comes a day
When the world will clasp hands
With my wandering rhymes.
Eleanor Elizabeth Montgomery. CCXXXIII
A VOICE FROM NEW ZEALAND
Cooee! I send my voice
Far North to you,
Rose of the water’s choice,
Dear England true!
Guardian angels three—
Faith, Hope, and Charity—
Welcome the strong sons free
Born unto you.
Cooee! Through flamegirt foam
Speeds now my soul
Straight to thy hero home.
Blue waters roll
Round where Immortals trod—
Shakespeare—half man, half God—
Laughed, with divining rod,
Sounding the soul.
Thou shining gem of sea!
Angels on wing,
Resting where men are free,
Teach them to sing
Such songs blind Milton heard,
Coleridge and Wordsworth stirred,
Keats’, and our own lost bird’s
Haunting, sweet ring.
Cooee! North, hear the song
On the South’s breath,
Laurels to life belong;
Cypress to death!
Wreathe in song’s garland fair,
Culled with a Nation’s care,
My cypress leaf—a prayer,
Warm with South’s breath!
Eleanor Elizabeth Montgomery.
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