The Eternal Children.
(To Jessie Mackay.)
Where a green mountain-valley
Meets the brave, broad Sea,
I lay.
’Neath freshest blue-and-white
Laugh’d the merry morning light;
The waves flash’d quick and bright,
And the breeze blew free.
Cliffs of buff and rosy clay,
Crests of glowing grass,
Closed the valley, and lock’d it in
With a rocky forest-pass;
Down whose precipice of leaves,
Where Tuis sang,
A happy creek of crystal
Shouting sprang:
Danced by the silver shingles
Of the old, deserted house
(That, satin-shining, peep’d between
A lacy, and light-latticed screen
Of willow-green, apple-green,
And white-blossom’d boughs):
Thence, ’mid bands of yellow blossom,
Gleam’d and slid
In long, blue, smooth loops,
The grassy flats amid.
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