New Zealand Verse/Spring Fires
XXXVII.
Spring Fires.
The running rings of fire on the Canterbury hills,
Running, ringing, dying at the border of the snow!
Mad, young, seeking, as a young thing wills,
The ever, ever-living, ever-buried Long Ago!
Running, ringing, dying at the border of the snow!
Mad, young, seeking, as a young thing wills,
The ever, ever-living, ever-buried Long Ago!
The soft running fire on the Canterbury hills,
Swinging low the censer of a tender heathenesse
To the dim Earth goddesses that quicken all the thrills,
When the heart’s wine of August is dripping from the press!
Swinging low the censer of a tender heathenesse
To the dim Earth goddesses that quicken all the thrills,
When the heart’s wine of August is dripping from the press!
The quiet bloom of haze on the Canterbury hills!
The fire, it is the moth that is winging to the snow,
Oh, pure red moth, but the sweet white kills:
And we thrill again to watch you, but we know, but we know!
The fire, it is the moth that is winging to the snow,
Oh, pure red moth, but the sweet white kills:
And we thrill again to watch you, but we know, but we know!
The long yellow spurs on the Canterbury hills
To a moon of maiden promise waken once in all the year,
When the fires come again and the little tui trills,
And who will name or think on a January sere?
To a moon of maiden promise waken once in all the year,
When the fires come again and the little tui trills,
And who will name or think on a January sere?
The lone, large flower of the Canterbury hills
On the slender ti-tree will hang her honeyed head
When the moon of fire has called her to the spurs and the rills,
Dim and strong and typical of tintless river-bed.
On the slender ti-tree will hang her honeyed head
When the moon of fire has called her to the spurs and the rills,
Dim and strong and typical of tintless river-bed.
The scent of burning tussock on the Canterbury hills,
The richness and the mystery that waken like a lyre
With the clearness of a dreaming that never yet fulfils!—
And we know it, and we know it, but we love the moon of fire!
The richness and the mystery that waken like a lyre
With the clearness of a dreaming that never yet fulfils!—
And we know it, and we know it, but we love the moon of fire!