New Zealand Verse/A Leaf from a Fly-book
XLV.
A Leaf from a Fly-book.
The king’s road is a troublous summons calling day and day;
But my feet take the cocksfoot track—the easy, vagrant way:
Beside the restless acres and the gold of noisy gorse,
The ripple lures its lover down the dazzle of its course.
But my feet take the cocksfoot track—the easy, vagrant way:
Beside the restless acres and the gold of noisy gorse,
The ripple lures its lover down the dazzle of its course.
Its speech is of the willow-reaches rich with lurking joy;
The revel of the rapids where gay life is death’s decoy:
My heart is with the laughing lips; I follow up and down;
But follow not the king’s white road toward the haste of town.
The revel of the rapids where gay life is death’s decoy:
My heart is with the laughing lips; I follow up and down;
But follow not the king’s white road toward the haste of town.
Afoot, the wash of waders, and aloft, the haze-veiled blue,—
The heart it needeth nothing so the cast fall clean and true.
O carol of the running reel, O flash of mottled back!
And who will take the king’s white road, and who the cocksfoot track?
The heart it needeth nothing so the cast fall clean and true.
O carol of the running reel, O flash of mottled back!
And who will take the king’s white road, and who the cocksfoot track?
The hour-glass fills with weather like a wine of slow content:
I throw the world behind me as a cartridge that is spent.
Then home by summer starlight bear my grass-cool, mottled load;
I quit the pleasant cocksfoot track: I take the king’s white road.
I throw the world behind me as a cartridge that is spent.
Then home by summer starlight bear my grass-cool, mottled load;
I quit the pleasant cocksfoot track: I take the king’s white road.
Seaforth Mackenzie.