Maoriland

MAORILAND, my mother!

Holds the earth so fair another?

O, my land of the moa and Maori,

Garlanded grand with your forests of kauri,

Lone you stand, only beauty your dowry,

Maoriland, my mother!

Older poets sing their frozen

England in her mists enshrouded;

Newer lands my Muse has chosen,

'Neath a Southern sky unclouded;

Set, a solitary gem,

In Pacific's diadem.

Land of rugged white-clad ranges,

Standing proud, impassive, lonely;

Ice and snow, where never change is,

Save the mighty motion only

Where through valleys seared and deep

Slow the serpent glaciers creep.

Land of silent lakes that nestle

Deep as night, girt round with forest;

Water never cut by vessel,

In whose mirror evermore rest

Green-wrapt mountain-side and peak,

Reddened by the sunset's streak.

Land of forests richly sweeping,

By the rata's red fire spangled;

Where at noonday night is sleeping,

Where, beneath the creepers tangled,

Come the tui's liquid calls

And the plash of waterfalls.

Land where fire from Earth's deep centre

Fights for breath in anguish furied,

Till she from the weight that pent her

Flings her flames out fiercely lurid;

Where the geysers hiss and seethe,

And the rocks groan far beneath.

Land of tussocked plain extending

In the distant blue to mingle,

Where wide rivers sigh unending

Over weary wastes of shingle;

Cold as moonlight is their flow

From the glacier-ice and snow.

Land where torrents pause to dally

'Neath the toi's floating feather,

Where the flax-blades in the valley

Whisper stealthily together,

And within the cabbage-trees

Hides the dying evening breeze.

Land where all winds whisper one word,

"Death!" — though skies are fair above her.

Newer nations white press onward:

Her brown warriors' fight is over —

One by one they yield their place,

Peace-slain chieftains of her race.

Land where faces find no furrow,

With the flush of life elated;

Where no grief is, save the sorrow

Of a pleasure that is sated;

Land of children lithe and slim,

Fresh of face and long of limb.

Land of fair enwreathëd cities,

Wide towns that the green bush merge in;

Land whose history unwrit is —

Memory hath no chaster virgin!

Land that is a starting place

For a newer, nobler race.

Maoriland, my mother!

Holds the Earth so fair another?

O, my land of the moa and Maori,

Garlanded grand with your rata and kauri,

Lone you stand, only beauty your dowry,

Maoriland, my mother!