DAY has fled to the west afar,
Where no shadows or sorrows are;
O'er earth's radiant western rim
God has gathered the day to him.
Hush! the river of night is here,
Flowing silently, cool and clear,
With its mystical thoughts that throng
And its silences deep as song.
Babe of my bosom, sleep;
Tender, sweet blossom, sleep!
Hearts may ache
While the long hours go creeping;
Hearts may break
While my baby is sleeping;
Never wake,
Though thy mother is weeping;
Babe of my bosom, sleep!
Sleep! the silence is all around,
Save the sighings that are not sound,
Where the wind in the branches weaves
Mystic melodies through the leaves;
Or the far-away murmurings
Like the stir of an angel's wings.
Only night is about us now—
Child, the earth is as tired as thou.

Babe of my bosom, sleep;
Tender, sweet blossom, sleep!
Hearts may ache
While the long hours go creeping,
Hearts may break
While my baby is sleeping:
Never wake.
Though thy mother is weeping;
Babe of my bosom, sleep!

FOR nine drear nights my darling has been dead;
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
Now I shall see her always lying white—
A frozen flower beneath a snow of flowers,
Drowned in a sea of fragrance. I shall hear
In every silence of the coming years
Only the muffled horror from the room
Where I had left my little child asleep—
And found a nameless thing shut in and sealed…
And I shall never feel her breath that kissed
Me closer than her lips did; for the thick,
Dead perfume of slow-drooping flowers has drawn
A veil across my memory.…She is dead;
For nine drear nights I have not dreamed of her.
When, all a tangle of wee clambering limbs,
And little gusts of laughter and of tears,
Sun-flecked and shadow-stricken every hour,
She played about me, I could lie all night
And dream of her. She came in wondrous ways,
Hiding behind the dark to startle me;
Then leaping down the vistas of the night,
And yielding all her wistful soul to me
With kisses tenderer and words more sweet
Than that mad, random vehemence of love
She lavished on me through her laughing day.

And now she has been dead nine dreary nights,
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
Her idle hoop is hung against the wall,
And in the dusk her cherished garments seem
As if still warmed with all her eager life.
And here the childish story that she wrote
Herself, and never finished;—how one day
With puzzled pucker of her brow she stopped
Mid-sentence! as if God had gravely held
A finger up to hush her, and she knew
She was to keep His secrets;—soon, so soon,
Perhaps He whispered low, she would know all.
And now she has been dead nine long sad nights;
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!
So I shall see her always lying white—
A frozen flower beneath a snow of flowers,
Drowned in a sea of fragrance. Now it seems
As if the memories I hold of her
Have shrivelled with the lilies that she loved
And lay with on her little narrow bed.
And now she will not murmur through my dreams
Those faint, strange words that mean so much in dreams,
And wither with the morn. I lie awake
And whisper to my hopes, “To-night I'll hear
Her petulant hands knock at my dreams' shut gate;

And oh, the gladness when I let her in!
Hush! what a patter of impatient feet
Down the long staircase of the stars!” And then
I sleep, and with an endless weariness
I grope among the spaces of the dark
For rhythm of her unresting feet, or touch
Of her caressing fingers, or the kiss
And whisper of her little self-willed curls;
But never lifts her laugh across the dark,
And never may I smooth her wilful curls,
And when I wake again I see her yet,
So pitifully thin and chill and straight,
Who used to be all curves—a living flame!
For nine drear nights my darling has been dead,
And till I die I cannot dream of her.
Perhaps she aches to come, shut in her grave—
So deep to dig to hide that tender form!
Dear God! she is too frail and weak to climb
The horror of those walls that hedge her in;
And when you call her to you let me be
Close by her side to lift her little feet
Up to the grass and sunshine of this world,
That lacking her is now so desolate.
So I have called and called…she does not come.
And yet I know the way into my heart
She has not quite forgotten…She does not come.
And now for nine drear nights she has been dead;
And ah, dear God! I cannot dream of her!

THE dawn hangs heavy on the distant hill,
The darkness shudders slowly into light;
And from the weary bosom of the night
The pent winds sigh, then sink with horror still.
Naked and grey, the guillotine stands square
Upon the hill, while from its base the crowd
Surges out far, and waits, to silence cowed,
Impatient for the thing to happen there.
Listen! The bells within the tower toll
Five naked notes; and down within his cell
The prisoner hears and mutters, “It is well,”
Though like that other knife each cuts his soul.
His sick nerves from the probing echoes shrink,
“This is the end,” he says; “let me be strong;
Let me be brave till then—‘t is not for long:
I must not think of it—I must not think!”
See, through the courtyard, guarded, comes the slight
Thin figure of the anarchist. Amazed,
He sees the thousand faces swiftly raised—
The billows of the crowd break into white!
One narrow, alien glance below, and then
The scene fades dimly from his film-glazed eyes;
And shuddering he sees his past arise—
The cycle of his life begins again.

And as misshapen memories crowd fast
Upon him, jostling in a sudden strife,
Athwart the dull, drab level of his life
Stand sharply out the blood-stains of his past:
His youth, before he knew he had it, lost;
His father's body by an accident
'Neath the rich man's remorseless mill-wheels pent—
A corpse; and sister, mother, brother tossed
Out to the mercy of the merciless.
His mother stricken next; her humble niche
Was needed by the reckless and the rich,
And death was easier than life's loneliness.
His sister, she had fortune in her face,
And won it, too, till Vice's fingers tore
The freshness from her figure, and no more
In idleness she flaunted her disgrace.
He lost her, stifled in the world's wide smother,
For years; till one night on the street they met.
She seized him—he can feel that hot thrill yet!—
She spoke him—knowing not he was her brother!
Wrong reeking of the rich incessantly!
Oppression and oppression o'er again!
Till from the smouldering hate within his brain
Mad fever fired the fuse of Anarchy.

Then plot and cunning, weak, futile and mean,
The maddened one against the many; thus
He strove to strangle Order's octopus—
And gained the goal at last—the guillotine!
It waits him grim and grey; he sees it not,
Nor hears the rising murmur ripple out
To the crowd's edge, and, turning, die in doubt.
The vague, uncertain future threatens—what?
So…shall he speak, fling out his last reply
Why waste the time in trivialities?
One throbbing thought now holds him; and there is
No room for sign or speech—he has to die.
Only a murmur wavers up and shakes
The sullen air, then hesitates and dies;
And the grim hush of horror stifled lies,
Suspended like a billow ere it breaks.
One bitter prayer, half-curse, he mutters when
The knife hangs high above, and the world waits.
But ere it swoops an age it hesitates:
The word is given, breaths are drawn, and then…
With eyes and soul close shut—be swift, relief!—
The prisoner waits the end that does not come.
For hark! that heavy, low, tumultuous hum
That surges, surges till it shouts “ Reprieve! ”

“ Reprieved and pardoned! ” All his senses swim
In a rose-mist! As Sleep's soft hand that soothes
The terse, strained limbs of fevered Day and smoothes
Life's knotted nerves—so comes relief to him.
And when he woke again his soul, set free,
Had wandered far, within a moment's space,
And seen the sadness of God's silent face—
The mighty calm of immortality.
How like a triumph his home-coming! Then
The glorious news that met him, how that Right
Had routed Wrong, for ever faction's fight
Was finished, and the world was one again.
Then swiftly through his swimming, mist-dimmed eyes
He sees the good and great upright again;
And Reason rings the knell of grief and pain;
The gladdened new world lapped in sunlight lies.
Long life was his with honour. On Fame's breath
His name was borne, until in perfect peace—
Glad like a mellow fruit to fall and cease—
His long life ripened richly into death.
Yet none knew this but he . The crowd still waits;
Shoots swift the lightning of the knife, and loud
Roars the hoarse thunder from the sated crowd
And justice has been done. God compensates.

The Coming Of The Rauparaha

BLUE, the wreaths of smoke, like drooping banners
From the flaming battlements of sunset
Hung suspended; and within his whare
Hipe, last of Ngatiraukawa's chieftains,
Lay a-dying! Ringed about his death-bed,
Like a palisade of carven figures,
Stood the silent people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Waiting. Then a sudden spilth of sunlight
Splashed upon the mountain-peak above them,
And it blossomed redly like a rata.
With his people and the twilight pausing;
Withering to death in regal patience,
Taciturn and grim, lay Hipe dying.
Shuddering and green, a little lizard
Made a ripple through the whare's darkness,
Writhing close to Hipe! Then a whisper
On the women's dry lips hesitated
As the ring of figures fluttered backwards;
“ 'T is the Spirit-Thing that comes to carry
Hipe's tardy soul across the waters
To the world of stars!” And Hipe, grimly,
Felt its hungry eyes a-glitter on him;
Then he knew the spirit-world had called him;
Knew the lizard-messenger must hasten,
And would carry back a soul for answer.

Twenty days in silence he had listened,
Dumb with thoughts of death, and sorely troubled
For his tribe left leaderless and lonely.
Now like sullen thunder from the blackness
Of the whare swept a voice untinctured
With a stain of sickness; and the women,
Breaking backwards, shrieked in sudden terror,
“ 'T is the weird Thing's voice, the greenish lizard,
All-impatient for the soul of Hipe!”
But the warriors in the shadow straightened
Drooping shoulders, gripped their greenstone meres,
And the rhythmic tumult of the war-dance
Swept the great pah with its throbbing thunder:
While their glad throats chanted, “E, 't is Hipe!
Hipe's voice that led us in the battle;
Hipe, young, come back to lead us ever!”
“Warriors and women of my hapu,”
Whirled the voice of Hipe from the darkness,
“I have had communion with the spirits;
Listen while I chant the song they taught me!
“I have seen the coming end of all things,
Seen the Maori shattered 'neath the onrush
Of the white-faced strangers. Like the flashing
Of the Sun-God through the ranks of darkness,
Like the Fire-God rippling through the forest,
Like the winter's silent blight of snowflakes—
Lo, the strange outbreak of pallid blossoms!—

Sweeps this surging wave of stranger-faces,
Frothing irresistibly upon us.
“Lo, the Pakeha shall come and conquer;
We have failed; the Gods are angry with us.
See, the withered autumn of our greatness!
“Old ancestral myths and sacred legends
That we deemed immortal—(priest and wizard
Died, and yet their stories, like a river,
Through the long years ran on, ever changeless!)—
Shall be buried; and the names long given
To each hill, and stream, and path and gully,
Shall be like a yesterday forgotten,
Blown like trembling froth before the sea-breeze.
“And the gods that people all our islands—
This great sea of presences immortal,
Living, real, alert for charm or evil,
Hurrying in every breeze, and haunting,
Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,
Deluging the daylight with their presence,
Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows—
Shall be banished to their spirit-regions,
And the world be lorn of gods and lonely.
“And the Maori shall no long time linger
Ere, a tardy exile, he shall journey
To the under-world. Yet he shall never
Break before this influx, but shall fight on

Till, a mangled thing, the tide o'erwhelm him.
And my tribe, the mighty Ngatiraukawa,
Had they left one worthy chieftain only
Who could lead my people on to victory,
Who could follow where my feet have trodden,
Might yet rear their name into a pillar
Carved with fame, until their stubborn story
From the mists of legend broke tremendous.
Flaming through the chilly years to follow
With a sunset-splendour, huge, heroic!
“Yes, the time is yours to rear a nation
From one conquering tribe, the Ngatiraukawa;
But my pah is leaderless and lonely;
I am left, the last of Maori chieftains;
And the gods have called me now to lead them
In their mighty battles! There is no one
Worthy now to wield my dying mana!”
So he ceased, and tremulous the silence
Sighed to voice in one long wail of sorrow.
So; it was the truth that Hipe taught them:
None was left to lead them on to victory;
None could follow where his feet had trodden.
Then by name old Hipe called the chieftains—
Weakling sons of that gaunt wrinkled giant,
Stunted saplings blanching in the shadow
Of the old tree's overarching greatness.
One by one he called them, and they shivered,

For they knew no answer to his question,
“Can you lead my people on to victory?
Can you follow where my feet have trodden?”
One by one a great hope burned within them,
And their feeble hearts beat fast and proudly;
One by one a chill of terror took them,
And the challenge on their lips was frozen.
Then the old chief in his anger chaunted
Frenziedly a song of scorn of all things,
And the frightened people of the village—
Warriors and women of his hapu—
Quavered into murmurs 'neath the whirlwind
Of his lashing words; and then he fretted
Into gusts of anger; and the lizard
Made a greenish ripple in the darkness,
Shuddering closer to him. And the people
Bending heard a whisper pass above them,
“Is there none to lead you on to victory,
None to follow where my feet have trodden?”
Lo, a sudden rumour from the edges
Of the silent concourse, where the humblest
Of the village crouched in utter baseness—
There among the outcasts one leapt upright,
Clean-limbed, straight and comely as a sunbeam.
Eager muscles clad in tawny velvet,
Eyes aflash with prescience of his power,
Yet a boy, untried in warriors' warfare,

Virgin to the battle! And untroubled
Rang a daring voice across the darkness,
“Yes, my people, one there is to lead you;
I dare point you on to fame and victory,
I dare tread where Hipe's feet have trodden.
Yea,” and prouder sang the voice above them,
“I can promise mightier fame unending;
I shall lead where Hipe dared not tempt you;
I shall make new footprints through the future—
I, the youth Te Rauparaha, have spoken!”
On the boy who braved them stormed the people,
Swept with fear and anger, and they clamoured,
“Who so proudly speaks, though not a chieftain?
Rank and name and fame he has none; how then
Dare he lead when sons of chieftains falter?”
But the boy leapt forward to the whare,
Clean-limbed, straight and comely as a sunbeam,
Eager muscles clad in tawny velvet,
Eyes aflash with prescience of his power,
Swinging high the mere he had fashioned
Out of wood, and carven like a chieftain's—
Aye, and with the toy had slain a foeman!
Flinging fiery speech out like a hailstorm,
“If ye choose me chieftain I shall lead you
Down to meet the white one on the sea-coast,
Where his hordes shall break like scattered billows
From our wall of meres. Him o'erwhelming,

I shall wrest his flaming weapons from him,
Fortify for pah the rugged island
Kapiti; then like a black-hawk swooping
I shall whirl upon the Southern Island,
Sweep it with my name as with a tempest,
Overrun it like the play of sunlight,
Sigh across it like a flame, till Terror
Runs before me shrieking! And our pathway
Shall be sullen red with flames and bloodshed,
And shall moan with massacre and battle!
“Quenching every foe, beneath my mana
Tribe shall stand with tribe, till all my nation
Like a harsh impassive wall of forest
Imperturbably shall front the strangers;
And with frown inscrutable shall wither
All this buzz and stir of stinging insects
That persist about us; then our islands
Garlanded with peace are ours for ever!
“Then the name of me, Te Rauparaha,
And the tribe I lead, the Ngatitoa,
Shall be shrined in sacred myth and legend
With the glamour of our oft-told prowess
Wreathed about them! Think, we shall be saviours
Of a race, a nation! And this island
We have sown so thick with names—each hillock,
Glen and gully, stream and tribal limit—
Shall for ever blossom like a garden

With the liquid softness of their music!
And the flute shall still across the evening
Lilt and waver, brimming with love's yearning!
And the exiled gods and banished spirits
Shall steal back to people all our islands
With their sea of presences immortal,
Living, real, alert for charm or evil,
Hurrying in every breeze and haunting,
Heavy-winged, the vistas of the forest,
Deluging the daylight with their presence,
Teeming, flooding, brimming in the shadows,
Till the world, a tawny world of gladness,
Shall no more of gods be lorn and lonely!
I, the youth Te Rauparaha, have spoken!”
Hipe heard, and, dying, cried in triumph,
“Warriors and women of my hapu,
He shall lead you, he, Te Rauparaha!
He shall do the things that he has promised.
He may fail; but think how grand his failure!
He alone can lift against the tempest
That proud head of his, and hugely daring,
God-like, hugely fail, or hugely conquer!”
Still he spoke, but suddenly the lizard
Made a greenish ripple through the darkness,
And was gone! Upon the long lone journey
To Te Reinga and the world of spirits
It had started with the soul of Hipe!

Then the plaintive wailing of the women
Quavered through the darkness, and a shudder
Took the slaves that in a horror waited
For the mercy of the blow to send them—
Ah! the sombre, slowly-stepping phalanx—
To the twilight world with Hipe's spirit.