The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature

by Jane Stafford

  Below, a realm with tangled rankness rife,

  Aloft, tree columns, shafts of stateliest grace.

  Gone is the forest nation. None might stay;

  Giant and dwarf alike have passed away.

  Gone are the forest birds, arboreal things,

  Eaters of honey, honey-sweet of song,

  The tui, and the bell-bird—he who sings

  That brief, rich music we would fain prolong.

  Gone the wood-pigeon’s sudden whirr of wings;

  The daring robin, all unused to wrong.

  Wild, harmless, hamadryad creatures, they

  Lived with their trees, and died, and passed away.

  And with the birds the flowers, too, are gone

  That bloomed aloft, ethereal, stars of light,

  The clematis, the kowhai like ripe corn,

  Russet, though all the hills in green were dight;

  The rata, draining from its tree forlorn

  Rich life-blood for its crimson blossoms bright,

  Red glory of the gorges—well-a-day!

  Fled is that splendour, dead and passed away.

  Gone are the forest tracks, where oft we rode

  Under the silver fern-fronds climbing slow,

  In cool, green tunnels, though fierce noontide glowed

  And glittered on the tree-tops far below.

  There, mid the stillness of the mountain road,

  We just could hear the valley river flow,

  Whose voice through many a windless summer day

  Haunted the silent woods, now passed away.

  Drinking fresh odours, spicy wafts that blew,

  We watched the glassy, quivering air asleep,

  Midway between tall cliffs that taller grew

  Above the unseen torrent calling deep;

  Till, like a sword, cleaving the foliage through,

  The waterfall flashed foaming down the steep:

  White, living water, cooling with its spray

  Dense plumes of fragile fern, now scorched away.

  Mighty are axe and fire, destroyers twain,

  Swift servants of the arch-destroyer, Man;

  And he is mighty as he hews amain,

  Bronzed pioneer of nations. Ay, but scan

  The ruined wonder never wrought again,

  The ravaged beauty God alone could plan!

  Bitter the thought: ‘Is this the price we pay—

  The price of progress—beauty swept away?’

  (1898)

  Blanche Baughan, ‘A Bush Section’

  Logs, at the door, by the fence; logs, broadcast over the paddock;

  Sprawling in motionless thousands away down the green of the gully,

  Logs, grey-black. And the opposite rampart of ridges

  Bristles against the sky, all the tawny, tumultuous landscape

  Is stuck, and prickled, and spiked with the standing black and grey splinters,

  Strewn, all over its hollows and hills, with the long, prone, grey-black logs.

  For along the paddock, and down the gully,

  Over the multitudinous ridges,

  Through valley and spur,

  Fire has been!

  Ay, the Fire went through and the Bush has departed,

  The green Bush departed, green Clearing is not yet come.

  ’Tis a silent, skeleton world;

  Dead, and not yet re-born,

  Made, unmade, and scarcely as yet in the making;

  Ruin’d, forlorn, and blank.

  At the little raw farm on the edge of the desolate hillside,

  Perch’d on the brink, overlooking the desolate valley,

  To-night, now the milking is finish’d, and all the calves fed,

  The kindling all split, and the dishes all wash’d after supper:

  Thorold von Reden, the last of a long line of nobles,

  Little ‘Thor Rayden’, the twice-orphan’d son of a drunkard,

  Dependent on strangers, the taciturn, grave ten-year-old,

  Stands and looks from the garden of cabbage and larkspur, looks over

  The one little stump-spotted rye-patch, so gratefully green,

  Out, on this desert of logs, on this dead disconsolate ocean

  Of billows arrested, of currents stay’d, that never awake and flow.

  Day after day,

  The hills stand out on the sky,

  The splinters stand on the hills,

  In the paddock the logs lie prone.

  The prone logs never arise,

  The erect ones never grow green,

  Leaves never rustle, the birds went away with the Bush,—

  There is no change, nothing stirs!

  And to-night there is no change;

  All is mute, monotonous, stark;

  In the whole wide sweep round the low little hut of the settler

  No life to be seen; nothing stirs.

  Yet, see! past the cow-bails,

  Down, deep in the gully,

  What glimmers? What silver

  Streaks the grey dusk?

  ’Tis the River, the River! Ah, gladly Thor thinks of the River,

  His playmate, his comrade,

  Down there all day,

  All the long day, betwixt lumber and cumber,

  Sparkling and singing;

  Lively glancing, adventurously speeding,

  Busy and bright as a needle in knitting

  Running in, running out, running over and under

  The logs that bridge it, the logs that block it,

  The logs that helplessly trail in its waters,

  The jamm’d-up jetsam, the rooted snags

  Twigs of konini, bronze leaf-boats of wineberry

  Launch’d in the River, they also will run with it,

  They cannot stop themselves, twisting and twirling

  They too will keep running, away and away

  Yes; for on runs the River, it presses, it passes

  On—by the fence, by the bails, by the landslip, away down the gully,

  On, ever onward and on!

  The hills remain, the logs and the gully remain,

  Changeless as ever, and still;

  But the River changes, the River passes.

  Nothing else stirring about it,

  It stirs, it is quick, ’tis alive!

  ‘What is the River, the running River?

  Where does it come from?

  Where does it go?’

  Listen! Listen! …

  Far away, down the voiceless valley,

  Thro’ league-long spaces of empty air,

  A sound! as of thunder.

  Look! ah, look!

  Yonder, deep in the clear dark distance,

  At the foot of the shaggy, snow-hooded ranges,—

  Out of the houseless and homeless country

  Suddenly issuing, eddying, volleying—

  Smoke, bright smoke! Not the soft blue vapour

  By day, in the paddock there, wreathing and wavering,

  O’er the red spark well at work in the stumps:

  Not the poor little misty pale pillar

  Here straggling up, close at hand, from the crazy tin chimney:—

  No! but an airy river of riches,

  Irrepressibly billowing, volume on volume

  Rolling, unrolling, tempestuously tossing,

  Ah! like the glorious hair of some else-invisible Angel

  Rushing splendidly forth in the darkness—

  Gold! gold on the gloom!

  … Floating, fleeing, flying …

  Thor catches his breath …. Ah, flown!

  Gone! Yes, the torrent of glory,

  The Voice and the Vision are gone—

  For over the viaduct, out of the valley,

  It is gone, the wonderful Train!

  Gone, yet still going on: on: on! to the far-away township

  (Ten miles off, down the track, and the mud of the metal-less roadway:

  Seen, once at Christmas, and once on a fine summer S
unday:

  Always a dream, with its dozens of passing people,

  Its three beneficent stores)…

  And past the township, and on!

  —The hills and the gully remain;

  One day is just like another;

  In the paddock the logs lie still;

  But the Train is not still; every evening it sparkles out, streams by and goes.

  ‘What is the Train, that it travels?

  Where does it come from?

  Where does it go?’

  It is gone. And the evening deepens.

  Darker the grey air grows.

  From the black of the gully, the gleam of the River is gone.

  Scarcely the ridges show to the sky-line,

  Now, their disconsolate fringe;

  But, bright to the deepening sky,

  The Stars creep silently out.

  ‘Oh, where do you hide in the day?’

  … It is stiller than ever; the wind has fallen.

  The moist air brings,

  To mix with the spicy breath of the young break-wind macrocarpa,

  Wafts of the acrid, familiar aroma of slowly-smouldering logs.

  And hark, through the empty silence and dimness

  Solemnly clear,

  Comes the wistful, haunting cry of some lonely, faraway morepork,

  ‘Kia toa! Be Brave!’

  —Night is come.

  Now the gully is hidden, the logs and the paddock all hidden.

  Brightly the Stars shine out! …

  The sky is a wide black paddock, without any fences,

  The Stars are its shining logs;

  Here, sparse and single, but yonder, as logg’d-up for burning,

  Close in a cluster of light.

  And the thin clouds, they are the hills,

  They are the spurs of the heavens,

  On whose steepnesses scatter’d, the Star-logs silently lie:

  Dimm’d as it were by the distance, or maybe in mists of the mountain

  Tangled—yet still they brighten, not darken, the thick-strewn slopes!

  But see! these hills of the sky

  They waver and move! their gullies are drifting, and driving;

  Their ridges, uprooted,

  Break, wander and flee, they escape! casting careless behind them

  Their burdens of brightness, the Stars, that rooted remain.

  —No! they do not remain. No! even they cannot be steadfast.

  For the curv’d Three (that yonder

  So glitter and sparkle

  There, over the bails),

  This morning, at dawn,

  At the start of the milking,

  Stood pale on the brink of yon rocky-ledged hill;

  And the Cross, o’er the viaduct

  Now, then was slanting,

  Almost to vanishing, over the snow.

  So, the Stars travel, also?

  The poor earthly logs, in the wan earthly paddocks,

  Never can move, they must stay;

  But over the heavenly pastures, the bright, live logs of the heavens

  Wander at will, looking down on our paddocks and logs, and pass on.

  ‘O friendly and beautiful Live-Ones!

  Coming to us for a little,

  Then travelling and passing, while here with our logs we remain,

  What are you? Where do you come from?

  Who are you? Where do you go?’

  Ah, little Questioner!

  Son of the Burnt Bush;

  Straightly pent ’twixt its logs and ridges,

  To its narrow round of monotonous labours

  Strictly tether’d and tied:

  And here to-night, in the holiday twilight,

  Conning, counting, and clasping as treasures,

  Whatsoever about your unchanging existence

  Moves and changes and lives:—

  One delight you have miss’d, and that one of more import than any:

  More quick than the River, more fraught than the Mail-Train,

  More certain to move than the stars in their courses,

  The most radiant wonder, the rarest excitement of all.

  What is it? Oh, what can it be?

  —It is you, little Thor! ’Tis yourself!

  Little, feeble, ignorant, destitute:—

  Wondering, questioning, conscious, alive!

  A Mind that moves ’mid the motionless matter:

  ’Mid the logs, a developing Soul:

  From the battle-field bones of a ruin’d epoch,

  Life, the Unruin’d, freshly upspringing.

  Life, Re-creator of life!

  Yea, spark of Life!

  Begotten, begetter of changes:

  Yea, morn of Man,

  Creature design’d to create:

  Offspring of elements all, appointed their captain and ruler:

  Here dawning, here sent

  To this, thy disconsolate kingdom—

  What change, O Changer! wilt thou devise and decree?

  Hail to thy god-ship, O Thor! Good luck to the Arm with the Hammer!

  Good luck to that little right arm!

  Green Bush to the Moa, Burnt Bush to the resolute Settler!

  In strenuous years ahead,

  Wilt thou wield the axe of the Fire?

  Wilt thou harness the horse of the Wind?

  Shall not the Sun with his strong hands serve thee, and the tender hands of the Rain?

  Daytime and Night spring in turn to thy battle,

  Time and Decay run in yoke to thy plough,

  And Earth, from the sleep of her sorrow

  Waked at thy will, with an eager delight rise, requicken’d, and heartily help thee?

  —Till the charr’d logs vanish away;

  Till the wounds of the land are whole:

  Till the skeleton valleys and hills

  With greenness and growing, with multiplied being and movement,

  Changeful, living, rejoice!

  Yea, newly-come Soul!

  Here on Earth, from what region unguess’d at?

  Here, to this rough and raw prospect, these back-blocks of Being, assign’d—

  Lean, cumber’d with ruin, lonely, bristling with hardship,

  A birthright that fires have been through—

  What change, O Changer! creature, Creator of Spirit!

  In this, thy burden’d allotment, wilt thou command and create?

  Finite, yet infinite,

  Tool, yet Employer,

  Of Forces Almighty,

  Beyond thee, within,—

  What fires, of the Spirit, what Storms, wilt thou summon?

  What Dews shall avail thee, what Sunbeams? What seed wilt thou sow?

  Ease unto weaklings: to thews and to sinews, Achievement!

  What pasture, Settler and Sovereign, shall be grazed from the soil-sweetening ashes?

  What home be warm in the wild?

  Nay, outflowing Heart! thou highway forward and back:

  Thought-trains of the Mind! commercing with far-away worlds:

  What up-country traffic and freight shall travel forth into the world?

  What help will ye summon and send?

  Spirit, deep in the Dark! with the light of what over-head worlds

  Wilt thou in the Dark make friends?

  O pioneer Soul! against Ruin here hardily pitted,

  What life wilt thou make of existence?

  Life! what more Life wilt thou make?

  Ah, little Thor!

  Here in the night, face to face

  With the Burnt Bush within and without thee,

  Standing, small and alone:

  Bright Promise on Poverty’s threshold!

  What art thou? Where hast thou come from?

  How far, how far! wilt thou go?

  (1908)

  ‘General Hints on Gardening’, from Yates’ Gardening Guide for Australia and New Zealand

  Soil

  The best soil is a deep light friable loam, but any ordinary
soil can be made into a good garden with ordinary care and attention. Heavy clay land should be dressed with air slaked with lime, say two tons to the acre or one lb. to the square yard, a good dressing of ashes, old mortar, or sand, should also be applied; where none of these things are available burnt clay, which can often be made on the spot, especially if timber is plentiful, will do as well. Care should be taken not to work this kind of soil in a wet condition, and whenever any portion of the garden, say either the winter or the summer is likely to remain vacant for any length of time, it is a good plan to roughly dig it, and leave in lumps exposed to the wind and rain. This will soon ‘mellow’ the clay, and make the soil friable and easy to work, more especially if it has had a good dressing each year of rotten horse dung, than which there is no better manure, especially for heavy soil. Very light soils are best manured with cow dung, where it is available, and should, if possible, have a good application of strong loam. Where the soil is poor or worked out, there is nothing better than an application of fresh soil taken from the top ‘spit’ of an old pasture. If the sods are first stripped and put in a heap to rot, they with sand and manure, make the best compost for growing flowers or choice plants in pots.

  (1897)

  Katherine Mansfield, ‘The Woman at the Store’

  All that day the heat was terrible. The wind blew close to the ground—it rooted among the tussock grass—slithered along the road, so that the white pumice dust swirled in our faces—settled and sifted over us and was like a dry-skin itching for growth on our bodies. The horses stumbled along, coughing and chuffing. The pack horse was sick—with a big, open sore rubbed under the belly. Now and again she stopped short, threw back her head, looked at us as though she were going to cry, and whinnied. Hundreds of larks shrilled—the sky was slate colour, and the sound of the larks reminded me of slate pencils scraping over its surface. There was nothing to be seen but wave after wave of tussock grass—patched with purple orchids and manuka bushes covered with thick spider webs.

  Jo rode ahead. He wore a blue galatea shirt, corduroy trousers and riding boots. A white handkerchief, spotted with red—it looked as though his nose had been bleeding on it—was knotted round his throat. Wisps of white hair straggled from under his wideawake—his moustache and eyebrows were called white—he slouched in the saddle—grunting. Not once that day had he sung ‘I don’t care, for don’t you see, my wife’s mother was in front of me!’…. It was the first day we had been without it for a month, and now there seemed something uncanny in his silence. Hin rode beside me, white as a clown, his black eyes glittered, and he kept shooting out his tongue and moistening his lips. He was dressed in a Jaeger vest—a pair of blue duck trousers, fastened round the waist with a plaited leather belt. We had hardly spoken since dawn. At noon we had lunched off fly biscuits and apricots by the side of a swampy creek.