New Zealand Verse/Picton Harbour by Night
LIV.
Picton Harbour by Night.
Warm is the night and still; the misty clouds
Obscure the moon so that there scarce is light
Left in the world; all round, the silent hills
Sleep mystically; and no night-haunting bird
Startles the glooming trees with mournful cry.
Silent the harbour sleeps, but myriad lights
Spread, phosphorescent, out from shore to shore—
Ripples and streaks of fire that live and die
Moment by moment, till the waters seem
Like to a sky of darkest purply-blue
Turned upside down, and thick with silver stars.
Obscure the moon so that there scarce is light
Left in the world; all round, the silent hills
Sleep mystically; and no night-haunting bird
Startles the glooming trees with mournful cry.
Silent the harbour sleeps, but myriad lights
Spread, phosphorescent, out from shore to shore—
Ripples and streaks of fire that live and die
Moment by moment, till the waters seem
Like to a sky of darkest purply-blue
Turned upside down, and thick with silver stars.
Like silver phantoms round the weedy piles
Of the dim-lighted wharf the fishes pass
In endless-seeming lines from right to left,
Ever the one direction following. Far away,
And faint with distance, through the moonless air
The steamers whistle sounds; anon her lights
Shine, dim and misty, as she rounds the point,
While answering lights glare out upon the wharf.
She nearer comes—the water ’neath her bows
Is streaked with trembling lines of green and red
And golden hues, that broad and broader grow
As on she creeps, a larger-looming form
Whose ever-throbbing engines beat and beat.
Of the dim-lighted wharf the fishes pass
In endless-seeming lines from right to left,
Ever the one direction following. Far away,
And faint with distance, through the moonless air
The steamers whistle sounds; anon her lights
Shine, dim and misty, as she rounds the point,
While answering lights glare out upon the wharf.
She nearer comes—the water ’neath her bows
Is streaked with trembling lines of green and red
And golden hues, that broad and broader grow
As on she creeps, a larger-looming form
Whose ever-throbbing engines beat and beat.
Now in her path the ghost-like silver fish
With sound of quick and sudden little waves
Rising and flapping on a sandy shore—
Affrighted leap; then for a moment sound
Dies all away; and then breaks forth again
In throb of engines, shouts, and rattling chains,
And hissing steam, as to the trembling wharf
The vessel is made fast. The flaring lamps
Flicker and flame in the soft rainy air,
And cast a glow upon the busy scene
Of loading and unloading; silence flies
Into the darkest hollows of the hills.
With sound of quick and sudden little waves
Rising and flapping on a sandy shore—
Affrighted leap; then for a moment sound
Dies all away; and then breaks forth again
In throb of engines, shouts, and rattling chains,
And hissing steam, as to the trembling wharf
The vessel is made fast. The flaring lamps
Flicker and flame in the soft rainy air,
And cast a glow upon the busy scene
Of loading and unloading; silence flies
Into the darkest hollows of the hills.
Clara Singer Poynter.