Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/9

It was a wondrous realm beguiled
Our youth amid its charms to roam;
O’er scenes more fair, serenely wild,
Not often summer’s glory smiled;
When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright,
No alabaster hall so white—
Thing lightly in a luminous dome
Of sapphire—seemed to float and sleep
Far in the front of its blue steep;
And almost awful, none the less
For its liquescent loveliness,
Behind them sunk just o’er the hill
The deep abyss, profound and still—
The so immediate Infinite;
That yet emerged the same, it seemed
In hue divine and melting balm,
In many a lake whose crystal calm
Uncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed;